Half Lit World
by XanderDG
Summary: A falling hero. A forgotten goddess. A Crimson King. At the edge of history, the X-Men discover that the world they have worked so long to defend is a world half lit.
1. Montana

Synopsis: Charles Xavier wakes, Jean Grey lies, and an ATF agent  
discovers a most unwelcome fate among the crickets.  
  
Disclaimer: This fanfic is rated PG-13 for language, mild violence  
and mature themes. It was written for entertainment purposes only  
and no profit is sought or accepted. Certain characters, indicia,  
situations and other materials are owned by DC Comics, Marvel  
Comics, Stephen King and others. No challenge to the copyright  
of the creators or controlling companies is intended. A full  
attribution of credit will follow the conclusion.  
  
The story may be freely distributed and/or archived (though the  
archivist should let me know where to see my name up in lights). I  
dig feedback the most and appreciate it greatly. Drop a line to  
XanderDG@hotmail.com and I will enthusiastically fire off a pithy  
reply.  
  
  
X-Men: Half Lit World  
  
by  
  
Alexander Greenfield  
  
  
Prologue: Montana  
  
  
1  
  
The setting sun bled down upon the open field. Stunted brush  
and crabgrass browned from months of drought took on a desolate,  
illusory beauty at this magic hour. With a mild breeze blowing,  
they shimmered in impossible hues of gold and red, stretching into  
the liquid infinity of the Great Plains, all the way to where the sky  
met the earth. A cricket hopped up onto a dried reed. He rubbed  
his legs together imperceptibly, beginning a solitary and mournful  
song that echoed across the field. Moments later, an answer came.  
Then another, and another. In only minutes a chorus, a cacophony  
of crickets filled the dusk with their chaotic, toneless opera.  
  
A small cabin hunched in the middle of the field, squat and out  
of place in the sterile beauty. The wood was dry as tinder, having  
baked in the arid climes for untold years. The architecture was  
frontiersman, but then, that's what this corner of the world was.  
There had been a driveway once, but it went to seed long ago. The  
skeleton of a burned outbuilding stood like a scarecrow. Lightning  
maybe. A single great window dominated the front of the homestead,  
but no one looked out. Nothing stirred within.  
  
The crickets continued their merriment, carousing, playing  
cricket games, growing louder. Then another noise penetrated the  
twilight. This one was shrill and mechanical: the squelch of a  
radio. There was a second of snow and static, then a distant voice  
spoke.  
  
"Status alpha?" it asked.  
  
"Nothing," came a response.  
  
"Status bravo?"  
  
Perhaps sixty yards in front of the cabin, an empty patch of  
grass came to life. Palmer Canon raised himself on his elbows.  
Fully camouflaged in combat gear, he blended in perfectly with the  
earth itself. Slowly, so as not to draw attention to himself, he  
placed binoculars to his eyes, mindful not to reflect the low red  
sun. He examined the facade of the cabin, the roof, the base of  
the building, looking for any evidence of movement beneath the  
porch. He looked into the window, seeking the faintest shadow.  
In the end, he found the same thing as every other check during  
the previous eight hours.  
  
"Negative movement, control." He slowly sank down into the  
tall grass, trading his binoculars for the scope on his M-16. "We're  
losing light here," he said into the lavalier microphone mounted on  
his collar.  
  
Canon looked to his left. His longtime partner, Evan Davis  
nodded in agreement. There were five of them in the grass. Bravo  
team's senses were attuned to the cabin, looking for signs of life.  
The men were professional, but no amount of training could  
prepare a body for an entire day spent motionless in the  
unforgiving Montana sun. They were sore, tired, and dangerously  
close to losing their edge. Palmer knew it was coming, and knew  
it wouldn't be long. The receiver crackled in his ear.  
  
"Stand by."  
  
Palmer sighed, wishing that he really could stand. Suddenly,  
the view through his scope changed. No longer was the bleak  
cabin the center of his view; instead, a monster filled his eyes.  
Green and horrible with mandibles and glossy black eyes, the  
creature wriggled and seemed to stare right through him.  
  
Canon tilted his head slightly to the side to look at the  
cricket on the barrel of his weapon. It seemed to look back,  
and Palmer knew that he was beginning to get loopy. He turned to  
Evan again, and his friend shrugged. Canon keyed his  
walkie-talkie.  
  
"If we don't go now," he said, "we go blind." Normally, his  
gravelly voice didn't carry that kind of edge, but the day was  
beginning to wear.  
  
"Stand by, bravo." Canon settled in, trying to find a  
comfortable perch. The cricket on his rifle chirped, and he blew  
on it lightly. The insect took the hint and scuttled into the evening.  
  
"Why is it always Montana?" Evan whispered. Palmer snorted  
despite himself, and the other agents grinned in agreement. The  
brief levity quickly dissipated, and the men focused again. The  
cabin. The crickets. They were everywhere, hopping around and  
singing their songs. They crawled on the impassive men, and on  
the grass that surrounded them, the thwip thwip noise of their  
jumping strong in the air.  
  
"We're waiting on the go order, boys," control whispered into  
the ears of the men. "Should just be another couple of minutes."  
Evan gagged, and Palmer whipped his head to look at him. His  
partner coughed out a cricket, and Canon shook his head,  
frowning. The team is losing it, he thought, and that is no good.  
He began to consider calling for a mission abort when the world  
seems to stop.  
  
All at once, the crickets stopped chirping. Canon looked  
around sharply, as did his fellows. There was not a single sound in  
the field, and even then, Palmer suspected more. An intuition of  
terror crept in, and he thought (*knew*) that all of the sound in  
Montana had stopped.  
  
"Shit," he whispered. Then he finally saw what he had been  
looking for the entire day. The window -- movement. Subtle, little  
more than an elongating of shadow, but it was there. Palmer's  
trigger hand flited down to depress the button on his radio when  
the moment seemed to stretch out forever.  
  
The cabin's window blazed with a white light of such blinding  
intensity that Bravo team winced as one. Brighter than any  
incendiary grenade, as bright as the sun, the light cut a swath  
across the field, making it seem like noon had returned to pick a  
fight with the lateness of the hour. The scorching illumination was  
not the worst of it, though. The worst was the noise.  
  
The radios howled into the men's ears. A long treble tone loud  
enough to burst an eardrum. The men of bravo company ripped  
out their earpieces, but their fear rose. The sound continued in the  
open air, like the death scream of a tenor god, painful and endless.  
From nowhere, from everywhere.  
  
The light from the window lanced out across the field like a  
javelin. Palmer Canon gritted his teeth against the noise. He  
drove his knuckles into his temples, attempting to trade one pain  
for another in some fight or flight reflex. Then, almost as a  
percussive instrument beneath the incomprehensible braying, he  
heard something he knew all to well. Distinctive and dangerous,  
there is no sound on earth like the one a twelve-gauge shotgun  
makes when it is fired. It is a final noise; an exclamation point.  
  
With the others paralyzed in paroxysms on agony, Canon stood,  
bringing his rifle to bear. Wincing against the impossible noise, he  
moved forward as trained by years of experience: fast and low to  
the ground, weapon at the ready. As he approached the cabin, he  
noticed a trickle of blood running out of his ear. He was briefly  
concerned at what his wife would say about having to clean his  
uniform. For a moment, Palmer was silhouetted by the blistering  
light, then he rolled, clambering to the porch of the cabin and  
pausing by the door. He panted, once, twice, then whirled and  
kicked it in.  
  
Inside the cabin it was impossibly dark and quiet. Canon  
blinked in confusion at the silence. The noise, so painful only  
moments before, had receded. On this side of the broken wooden  
doorway, it was only a shrill undercurrent. Stranger still was the  
darkness. No bright light filled the house, even in the room with  
the window. Indeed, Palmer could barely see, so he flipped on the  
tactical flashlight mounted to the end of his rifle.  
  
Palmer Canon thought that he was in hell. The walls of the  
cabin were covered in unspeakable, glistening gore. They were  
black and reflective, sharing more with gristle and tissue than  
post and mortar. Canon gagged, clenching his jaw to keep his  
stomach. The cabin was a charnel house, an abattoir of human misery.  
Palmer was a professional, though. He took a deep breath and  
moved through the slaughterhouse, reporting in on his radio.  
  
"Control? Control, this is bravo leader," he said into the radio.  
At first there was only the sound of (*crickets*) static. Then the  
voice of central control came, though it sounded much further  
away than only moments ago.  
  
"Can you see them? Can you see them?" the voice asked.  
  
"I'm in the house," Canon said, confused. "It looks bad. There  
is no sign of the target." He moved into the next room, the one  
with the window. The walls here seemed as though they had  
recently been burned by fire, and what once may have been a  
dining room table actually smouldered in the dark.  
  
"They're so beautiful. The ladies. The ladies."  
  
"Say again, control." Palmer placed his hand on the blackened  
wall, finding it cool to the touch. Shining the light around the  
room, he found a door in the back and began walking carefully  
toward it.  
  
"The ladies . . . the beauty . . ." The voice was becoming  
incoherent.  
  
"What's happening out there, control?"  
  
"Mother, mother . . ." Canon frowned and moved on,  
disconcerted by the loss of any real connection with the world  
outside the cabin. Nonetheless, he felt compelled to continue.  
Palmer was not given to flights of fancy, but even he would  
acknowledge a feeling of otherworldliness as he moved to the door  
at the rear of the dining room.  
  
He kicked the door, splintering the charred wood. He  
leaned in at the side of the door and peeked around the corner. A  
set of stairs descending into blackness -- a basement? Palmer  
slowly came around the corner and aimed his light into the inky  
darkness below, but found nothing discernable. He began to  
carefully descend the steps.  
  
Canon's light cut the darkness as he crept forward, sending  
bright shafts of light down in front of him. Then he heard  
something and stopped cold, tilting is head to listen. Voices? He  
understood nothing articulate, but was sure what he was hearing  
was human.  
  
Whispering voices. Several? Or just one? It was impossible  
for him to be sure. He moved a bit more quickly down the rickety  
wooden steps, and heard one crack loudly just in time to step back.  
The voices continued unabated, and Palmer decided to call to  
them.  
  
"ATF!" he yelled in his most commanding voice. After the  
silence, the booming base of his own yelling startled him.  
Nonetheless, Canon continued. "Step into the light with your  
hands raised!"  
  
If anything, the strange whispering gained intensity. Palmer  
began to suspect that the voices were not speaking in English; they  
were talking in a language close to one he could understand, but  
just removed enough that he could not comprehend the words.  
  
"We have this building surrounded! Everyone can still come  
out of this in one piece if you just step out!" There was silence for  
a moment, then Palmer heard a sound that would stay with him for  
the rest of his days: a giggle. It could have been a little girl. Or  
an old woman, perhaps. For the first time it occurred to him that  
he might only be hearing the voices in his own head.  
  
As he told junior agents, fear produced sloppiness. Palmer took  
two steps on the staircase in one leap, trying to avoid the cracked  
stair. He heard the loud snap, and was fast enough that he almost  
found his footing before the entire staircase crumbled beneath him.  
Instead of falling under the stairs, though, and landing on some  
crude basement floor, the impossible happened. Palmer tumbled  
end over end through the dark, whirling like a pinwheel through an  
enormous black space. While Palmer watched the light on his rifle  
twirl away from him in the darkness, he had time to consider how  
much landing would hurt.  
  
2  
  
Charles Xavier had no fondness for funerals. He had been to  
many in his time, and felt that if he was ever forced to attend  
another, it would be too soon. He knew instinctively that the  
gathering he was part of now was a burial of some kind, that this  
long goodbye was for someone he would miss terribly, and that it  
was the biggest ceremony he had ever seen.  
  
The crowd around him was enormous. Somewhere on the  
periphery of his consciousness Xavier suspected that there were  
more than only the thousands of people he could see along the  
rock lined river. Everyone was here, from everywhere. He looked  
up at the pretty red headed girl who was standing next to him. She  
had a blond streak running through her hair that reminded him of  
his student, Rogue's white stripe. The girl stood with a boy she  
was close to, a relative if appearances did not deceive. Her  
brother, maybe? Xavier smiled. He liked seeing happy families.  
This didn't completely blot out his annoyance for forgetting whose  
funeral he was attending.  
  
"Excuse me," he said to the redhead. "Have you seen my  
students?" The girl turned to look down at Charles, who was  
sitting in his wheelchair. She smiled at him.  
  
"I'm sorry. I don't think I have."  
  
"Can you tell me what is happening here?"  
  
"Guess you missed the wake last night," she said.  
  
"Yes. I suppose I must have. How was it?"  
  
"Well, it was sad, of course. I'd met him a couple of times over  
the years. At least, I'd been close enough to call it meeting.  
Anyway, it seemed like a bunch of us just sat up all night talking  
and remembering, you know? I don't ever remember having a  
dream this long and involved before."  
  
Charles frowned. "You can't be dreaming. This is my dream.  
And I long ago mastered the art of dreaming lucidly. My friend  
Erik taught me."  
  
"I'm sure you're right," the girl smiled. "But I don't think this  
dream is only mine. I think this is more of a group project." She  
gestured around them at the giant crowd. There were a great many  
human beings, of course, but there were also other things that  
Xavier couldn't identify despite his broad experience. He saw a  
man dressed as a clown talking to a giant spider nearby. Further  
afield, several large, floating goldfish appeared to be dancing with  
a talking dog of various breeding.  
  
Confused by his surroundings, he reached out with his mind.  
Xavier was a powerful telepath with the ability to both read and  
control the thoughts of his fellow man. However, Charles believed  
strongly in the notion of individual freedom, so he rarely used that  
latter permutation of the awesome force.  
  
There were a cacophony of voices speaking in an infinitum of  
languages. All of them were mournful. More strange, though, he  
heard others with telepathic abilities doing exactly what he was --  
using their abilities to try and gather their bearings in this strange  
place. It occurred to Charles to wonder if mind-readers were not  
naturally prone to being what Kitty might have called control  
freaks. In the waking world they always had an edge, but here,  
ruled as things were by the subconscious . . .  
  
There it was. He found the recognition of place, at least.  
Charles was sound asleep, and so were the others here. Millions of  
minds, more even, all in the same dream. It was impossible, but it  
was happening. "This is extraordinary," he said to the redhead.  
  
"I know. It really is. We're standing here surrounded by broken  
hearts. Last night I saw this woman I used to babysit for and I told  
her I was pregnant. Do you know what she told me?"  
  
"No. Congratulations, by the way."  
  
"Thanks a lot. I won't know when I'm awake for a while yet,  
but I'm pretty sure this is a great thing. Anyways, Lyta, that's the  
woman I babysat for, she told me that I should kill my baby. That  
I ought to kill it before it broke my heart."  
  
"That's a terrible thing for her to say, dear."  
  
"Yeah. I sort of understand it coming from her. Her kid,  
Daniel was kidnaped, and I think they found him dead. I can get why  
she would say what she did. But still, at the same time I have  
to think. To worry . . ."  
  
"To be concerned that your children really will break your  
heart, yes." They were right at the edge of the river, and Xavier  
and the redhead paused for a moment to stare into the impossibly  
blue water. A hot breeze blew in, and Charles shivered despite the  
temperature. His friend Moira might have said that a goose  
walked over his grave. He could sense that the rest of the crowd  
felt it as well, a ripple of fearful emotion passed over the throng  
with the gust, and then Charles noticed something else.  
  
Across the river he saw a familiar figure. The distance was  
great, and the man was weaving in and out of the crowd, so Xavier  
could not identify who it was. Still, he recognized the gait, the  
carriage. Charles tried to seek the figure out with his telepathic  
ability when something peculiar happened. He caught a trace of  
intimacy; it registered to his mind in smells, an aftershave,  
perhaps, or wet beach sand. As suddenly as the traces appeared,  
they were replaced by a single, much darker smell. Charles "felt"  
this smell immediately behind the center of his forehead, where  
the Hindu visualized the third eye. It was a scent similar to  
copper, but there was no mistaking it. The familiar and  
comfortable smells were replaced completely by the electric smell  
of blood.  
  
"Are you all right," the redhead asked.  
  
"I have to go. I'm worried about . . ."  
  
"Go on. It's okay. We'll be meeting again soon enough."  
  
"Of course you're right. I'll see you soon," Charles said, without  
knowing exactly why. He wheeled away from the girl and her  
brother, following along the edge of the river. Though the pace  
was slow on the craggy ground, even more when he had to  
maneuver around small groups talking in hushed tones, he  
managed to keep track of the figure on the other side of the river.  
He was well in front of Charles, and moving at a rapid pace  
against the flow of the masses. This was a man with somewhere to  
be.  
  
At last Charles came to a massive stone bridge, and he carefully  
wheeled over it, apologizing when he inadvertently wheeled over  
someone's toes. A creature who resembled a pile of sticks with an  
angular head cussed him out but good, but that was all the thing  
did, and Xavier was pleased that it didn't do more in its anger.  
When he rolled off the bridge, Xavier caught sight of the figure  
moving toward a massive stone staircase. He panicked a little bit,  
and pushed his chair as quickly as it would go -- if he lost his  
quarry up the stairs the game would be up. As he bumped rapidly  
over the cobblestones, Charles did not ask himself why it was so  
imperative to catch the familiar stranger. He only knew that he  
had to do it.  
  
He arrived at the staircase only a moment too late. The figure  
climbed the steps with neither hurry nor lethargy. When he looked  
up, Charles could not see the top of the stone steps, the apex was  
shrouded in mist. This was his last chance.  
  
"Wait!"  
  
The figure stopped in mid stride. Xavier was momentarily  
hopeful that the man would turn around and face him. Instead, the  
figure only turned his head slightly, revealing a familiar sliver of  
profile before continuing up into the fog. Charles turned his chair  
in a complete circle, unsure of what to do. Then he caught sight of  
a woman standing nearby, and he wheeled over to her.  
  
She was tall and beautiful, regal even, with perfectly  
unblemished green skin. She wore a tiara of silver and a dress so  
black that light itself become lost within its folds.  
  
"Pardon me," Xavier said.  
  
"Yes, mortal?" He noticed that the streak of a single tear was  
burned into her cheek.  
  
"Can you tell me what lays at the top of those stairs?"  
  
"It is the stone garden of the Lord of this realm," she answered.  
"We once walked there together, telling lies to each other. Making  
promises that we both knew we did not mean." The woman  
smiled.  
  
"Is there another way up?"  
  
"No. The staircase is the only way into the garden."  
  
"Damn. I cannot climb those stairs."  
  
"Of course you can, mortal. Though the ability to walk does  
not necessarily mean that one ought to run in headlong."  
  
Charles looked down then, and saw that he was standing. His  
legs were as strong as they had been in his youth. He looked at the  
woman with a broad smile, and she reached out to him, lightly  
touching his bald head.  
  
"I am lonely, mortal. I despise funerals, and this one will soon  
begin. Would you forget your quest and keep the company of a  
Queen?"  
  
Charles looked in the woman's piercing eyes, and then back at  
the staircase. He was torn. The woman's voice was like wind  
chimes, and he might have listened to it for hours, forever, and  
more. Then he remembered the copper taste, and his students, and  
his dream for the world. "I have to go," he said to the Queen.  
  
"Go then," she said. "There are other worlds than these." The  
Queen frowned, as though unsure of herself for a moment.  
"Perhaps we will see one another again."  
  
"Perhaps," Charles said. He left her there and bounded up the  
stairs, momentarily overtaken by joy as he felt the muscles of his  
legs ignite with the exercise. He entered the fog and couldn't see  
even a foot in front of him, yet he still charged ahead. It seemed to  
Charles that he was climbing for hours, that someone had built  
stairs into the side of Everest. Finally, the thick fog resolved itself  
into a mist, and Xavier arrived at the top of the staircase, out of  
breath but pleased with himself. He wiped his head with his  
handkerchief and looked around.  
  
The stone garden reminded him of Stonehenge, only grander in  
scale. The massive slabs of granite were placed end to end  
creating a path in front of him. Xavier knew full well that the trail  
would not remain easy; that he would enter a maze if he followed  
the figure into this place, but he did not even hesitate. Even if he  
were lost for days, he would be walking on his own two legs, and  
that would be enough. Besides, this was only a dream.  
  
He proceeded, and as he expected, path diverged from path in  
the mist. He decided that he would follow a pattern through the  
labyrinth -- left turn, right turn, left turn -- in hopes that he would  
eventually find an edge wall. His nerves only manifested when he  
heard a noise behind him. The clop-clop sound of run down boot  
heels had been following him for some time, always just too far  
afield for him to spot the source. Charles moved faster, and the day  
grew colder and colder. He began to shiver as he moved, the mist  
clinging to him like a sheen of frigidity.  
  
Whispers. Charles heard whispers in front of him, and he broke  
into a run attempting to find the source. He turned wildly through  
the maze, both in flight from the ceaseless noise of boots striking  
cobble behind him, and toward the noise he was certain was the  
figure he was chasing. He rounded a final corner, and his  
hypothesis proved correct -- the figure was there, and he wasn't  
alone.  
  
It must have been the locus of the maze, the terminus of the  
labyrinth. A broad grassy area with a seemingly endless number of  
entrances and exits. Looming above, perhaps hundreds of miles  
distant, Charles Xavier saw a tower of pure obsidian. The  
structure was black as coal and difficult to discern through the  
mist, but it was clearly huge. In the center of the courtyard, two  
men stood talking. Clad all in black was the figure that Charles  
had been pursuing. His back was to him, and the man was  
speaking to an ephemeral creature shimmering red (crimson,  
Xavier thought, not red, crimson). It was impossible to tell the  
true shape of the crimson thing. Its form shifted like heat off  
summer asphalt. Charles's jaw trembled in the cold. Though he  
could not see his breath, he thought that the temperature must be  
well below zero.  
  
Neither of the figures responded to his entrance, either ignoring  
him or finding him too insignificant to warrant attention. Xavier  
quelled the preternatural feeling of dread that had overtaken him  
and crossed the courtyard. Despite the lack of response, he was  
still sure that the man in black was someone he knew. Someone  
he had to speak to. Behind him, Charles heard the boot heels  
clop-clopping close at hand. He moved faster, not daring to turn  
around, but wondering nonetheless why the boots were so loud on  
grass.  
  
Xavier approached the figure in black, reaching out to touch the  
man's shoulder, to pull his attention from the seductive crimson  
shape. The copper taste was heavy on his tongue, and his forehead  
throbbed. Then a voice spoke behind him, the man with the boots.  
It was friendly and fraternal and smooth as silk. It chilled Charles  
to his very core.  
  
"Hey, there, Old Hoss," the man whispered, breathing warmly  
into Xavier's ear. "Time to be moving on. Oh yes. Time for  
everyone to be moving on." Charles's hand finally came to rest on  
the figure in black's shoulder when the world began to slip away.  
The rock wall was the first to go, then the grass at his feet.  
  
"Yeah, pop, time to move on." Then the voice was gone, too,  
and the figures before him. The last thing Charles remembered  
was the feeling of cold in his spine, and the distant tower looming  
before him, in desperate danger of falling into the void.  
  
3  
  
The rifle clattered in the distance, and Palmer Canon worried  
that it might be damaged. That was the last kind of paperwork he  
wanted to deal with. He landed heavily on the floor, knocking the  
wind out of him. As he was trained, he ran his hands over his  
body, feeling for breaks. Nothing. He sat up gingerly, taking in  
his surroundings. Canon saw his hand in front of his face, but only  
barely. In the distance, he noted a luminescent shimmering against  
a rock wall; light reflected off of water.  
  
It made no sense; he could not have fallen as far as it seemed he  
did without the slightest injury, yet here he was. He scrambled  
about on his hands and knees looking for his flashlight, but it was  
nowhere to be found. Finally, he stood and stumbled forward,  
feeling his way through the darkness. He had to crawl over moist  
mounds of earth as his path contracted, narrowing, the ceiling  
sinking down to the level of his head. Palmer walked in a crouch,  
finally having to crawl in and around the teeth of stalagmites and  
stalactites before he realized that he was in some kind of ancient  
cave. He crawled through a narrow space and came to a rock  
blockage with a glowing fissure. Frowning, Canon peered through  
the crack and smiled triumphantly.  
  
On the other side of the gap laid his rifle, the all-important  
flashlight pointing off into oblivion. He reached into the breach,  
attempting to grab the strap and pull his weapon to him. Too far.  
He tried again, straining mightily and pressing his face to the wall.  
Gritting his teeth, Canon felt the webbed shoulder strap on the tips  
of his finger -- an inch more, maybe less. Then he felt something  
else.  
  
Palmer screamed at the feminine touch of a hand to his own.  
He instantly recoiled, jerking his arm away, but he found himself  
caught in the rocks. The soft skin of a woman's hand massaged his  
own. Her skin was warm, feverish, and her touch frankly erotic.  
  
"The old laws have been ridden down, my love," came a voice  
through the wall. Her tone was wistful, and her voice touched by  
smoke. Canon felt her other hand begin working on his forearm,  
massaging in slow circles. He strained his neck, urgently  
endeavoring to see through the breaks in the cave in, but there  
were only shadows.  
  
"Wrenched from my grasp," the woman intoned.  
  
"What are you talking about!?! Let me go!"  
  
"Robbed me of our birthright. Suffering, great with wrath, I  
loose my very poison over the soil." Her touch, though it was soft,  
was beginning to burn him.  
  
"The other agents are surrounding this building right now. We  
will storm the premises and . . . " Canon screamed again when a  
third and fourth hand began working his arm. These hands were  
different, rougher, old and rheumatic. They caressed and cajoled  
Palmer's skin as though trying to divine something from it. Tears  
came to his wide gray eyes then, for the first time since his father  
died of cancer. He began to hyperventilate as well, his heart rate  
dangerously high.  
  
"Oh, I very much doubt that my child," came an ancient,  
croaking voice. Then the two voices spoke together, but they said  
different words.  
  
"It's just us, now," said one of the voices.  
  
"It's justice now," said another.  
  
"What do you want from me?"  
  
"I loose my poison," said the young voice.  
  
"Poison to match the grief pouring out of our heart," answered  
the old.  
  
"Now the land grows cursed, burning sterile, blasting leaf and  
child," they both breathed.  
  
"Let me go," Canon cried, convulsing violently in an attempt to  
free himself. He failed.  
  
"Fate has picked you, child."  
  
"She has tasked you, love." They spoke together again, a  
dissonant chorus.  
  
"Raise her as your daughter," said the ancient voice,  
commanding and sure. "Keep her safe from harm. When the time  
is right, she will find her place."  
  
"Raise us as your daughter," came the virgin whisper, secret  
promises hidden in the tones. "Keep us safe from harm. When the  
time is right, we will find our place."  
  
"Please! I don't understand."  
  
"Poor dear."  
  
"You needn't understand, lover. Only act."  
  
The hands stopped their circular kneading, grabbing Palmers  
arm and pulling him abruptly, holding him immobile. His eyes  
showed their whites when he felt hot breath on his fingers, then the  
soft flesh of a woman's lips. A tongue lightly brushed the tip of his  
index finger, then he felt the unforgiving bone of teeth.  
  
Canon screamed again in pain and terror, thrashing violently.  
Finally, his arm came free and he lurched around apoplectically in  
the constricted cavern. There was no room to stand, no room to  
move. No light to see. He surged backwards on all fours, growing  
more and more disoriented.  
  
4  
  
A glowing halo in the blue moonlight, Jean Grey-Summers'  
crimson hair framed her. It spread over the pillow in liquid  
rivulets, surrounding her pained face while she slept. With a sharp  
inhale, she awakened, her green eyes flitting open. She looked  
around her room briefly, trying to get her bearings. Moments ago,  
she had been somewhere else. Familiarity quickly set in, but her  
troubled thoughts removed some of the sanctuary of home and  
hearth.  
  
She looked down at her husband, Scott slumbering beside her.  
Jean could not suppress a small smile at his snoring. Behind the  
ruby goggles that he had to wear even in sleep, his face seemed  
impassive. Jean wondered that a man with such disarming, boyish  
looks could hold an uncontrollable power as great as his. Through  
red haze of the special glasses, Scott could look out on the world  
as anyone else. Take them away, though, and a torrent of  
plasmatic energy was unleashed. Now her love was at peace; no  
dreams appeared to trouble his slumber. Jean had telepathic  
abilities like Xavier, though her ability with telekinesis  
was far more developed. Still, had she wanted, she could easily  
have known whether Scott was asleep or not. She had long ago  
promised not to probe his mind beyond the natural rapport they  
shared, though, so she went with the direct approach. Calming  
herself after the intensity of her nightmare, Jean reached down to  
shake Scott gently.  
  
"You awake, honey," she asked.  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"You awake?" He rolled over to face her, his eyes seeming to  
float through the red filter.  
  
"Sure," he said.  
  
"I got the weirdest thing in the mail today."  
  
"Uh-huh?"  
  
"Yeah. One of those chain letter things." Scott frowned at her.  
Jean was not given to the fanciful, so he could deal with it this one  
time. "It was kind of scary," she added.  
  
"Send five dollars and you'll be a millionaire in month?"  
  
"No. Creepy. 'This letter has been around the world time and  
again since the very start of things. Send it to ten of your friends  
and they will avoid the coming of the storm and the end of all  
stories. If you do not, you will . . .' I forget. 'If you don't, you get  
bad luck and cancer,' or something."  
  
"Lovely." Scott sat up against the headboard and looked at her  
seriously. "So what'd you do?"  
  
"Threw it away."  
  
"You're screwed, Jeannie."  
  
"Nice. Thanks."  
  
Scott nestled back down under the covers and laid his head on  
his wife's chest, almost immediately drifting back toward  
dreamland. They breathed like that for a moment before Jean  
broke the silence again.  
  
"Do you believe in God, Scott?"  
  
"Christ, Jean," he said, becoming annoyed. "I don't know. It's  
three in the morning." He propped himself up on his elbow to face  
her again. She only stared at the ceiling.  
  
"I wish I did."  
  
"It would be nice, baby, but based on our experiences, don't you  
see that we basically look out for ourselves?"  
  
"Wow," she exclaimed. "Where did the selfish criminal  
mastermind streak come from? 'Look out for number one.'"  
  
"Come on, Jeannie. I'm too tired for this right now."  
  
"I'm just curious, Scott." Her husband paused for moment, then  
he took a deep breath.  
  
"Jean, we've had a really long road, you know. I look around  
these days, I see everything we've gone through, and I have to  
wonder. I used to imagine God as this friendly bearded guy sitting  
on a cloud when I was a kid. Now . . . I don't know."  
  
"Go on. Please."  
  
"I'm just not too sure about God, Jean. At best, he's an arbitrary  
prankster. So why in the hell should we kneel before that. Before  
a being who is nothing more than a practical joker slipping frogs  
into the teacher's desk. There's a better way, lover. There is a  
better way." Scott abruptly rolled over, and Jean looked at his  
back. Then she stared back up at the ceiling, her hair continuing to  
glow under the moon's indifferent gaze. There would be no sleep  
tonight.  
  
5  
  
In a full on panic, Palmer didn't notice the shrill sound escaping  
his throat. He did not hear how like a child's the noise sounded,  
nor how similar it was to the banshee screeching the radios  
produced outside. Instead, without even the room to turn around,  
he powered backwards on his hands and knees horrified even when  
he felt himself enter a wider space. He inhales deeply and whirls  
around.  
  
He stared at his surroundings with no small amount of  
amazement. His legs splayed before him, he sat at the foot of the  
rickety stairs in a perfectly normal basement. Disoriented,  
Canon's hand flies up to his forehead -- blood. He must have taken  
a pretty good bump to the head. He looked closely at the finger he  
was sure was (bitten off) lost in the fall, but it proved to be present  
and accounted for.  
  
Canon shook his head. Could it all have been a hallucination?  
The product of a fall and a knock on the head? Consciously, the  
man knew that this prospect was impossible. The experience of  
the cave was as real and tactile as waking up in the morning and  
getting in the shower. At the same time, part of him truly wanted  
to believe that he had been party to some otherworldly phantasm.  
Palmer did not hold any serious misgivings about the supernatural.  
Nobody did any more. There were too many unusual occurrences in  
this day and age for a person to deny that anything was possible.  
But possibility and reality were two entirely different things,  
and Palmer Canon was content to watch the Fantastic Four battle  
aliens on the evening news. He wanted no part of it himself.  
  
Pulling a strip of gauze out of one of his cargo pockets, he  
looked around the wide, low room. It appeared to be a garden  
variety root cellar, though he did not remember such a room being  
alluded to in the pre-dawn briefing. Canon tore the strip and used  
two band aids to stick it fast to the cut above his eye, stemming the  
blinding flow. Then he stood, and began to move carefully  
through the muddy room.  
  
When he came around the corner, he found what he had been  
sent here for. Canon's dulled senses sharpened in a burst of  
adrenaline, and he pulled his side arm from the holster. In the  
corner of the room was a chair facing into the wall. It was a big  
leather job, the kind you would find in some New York tycoon's  
Upper West Side office. At the very apex, Palmer could see the  
top of a man's head.  
  
"Lie down on the floor and put your hands on your head! Move  
slowly! Do it NOW!" The figure in the chair did not respond.  
Indeed, it didn't move at all. Canon quickly closed the gap, his  
weapon trained on the figure's head. With his free hand, he double  
keyed his radio, the universal silent sign for "assistance needed."  
There was nothing by way of a response in his ear piece. What  
was happening out there?  
  
"Joshua Leonard Kirby," he shouted. "You are wanted on  
suspicion of multiple counts of homicide in the first degree. I am  
an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and I  
am armed! Now put your goddamn hands on your head!"  
  
Nothing. Palmer quickly came around the front of the chair,  
and his jaw dropped in horror at the sight before him. The man who  
had once been suspected child killer Joshua Leonard Kirby was now  
a blistered, molten thing. It was as though somebody sat on the  
floor beneath the man and fired a blowtorch directly at him.  
  
It didn't make any sense, though. Keeping his gun  
talismanically trained on the dead man, Canon reached forward to  
touch the corpse's untouched clothes. He ran his finger along the  
soft leather of the chair. Palmer drew back a bit, then,  
disconcerted. The dead man had been burnt to a cinder, but not a  
stitch of his clothing had been touched. In the dead man's hand  
was a long dagger, almost ceremonial in appearance.  
  
*Sniff!*  
  
Palmer wheeled around to the sound, his pistol finding the  
target almost before his eyes did. In front of the corpse in the  
corner of the room rested a burlap sack. As Canon moved toward  
it, the bag twitched. The agent reached forward and untied the top,  
pulling at the string. The bag fell away, and Palmer gasped.  
  
The little girl looked at him with neither suspicion nor fear.  
She had a burst of flaming red hair, and astounding green eyes  
whose color was so bright that they showed even in the gloom.  
She looked at Palmer expectantly.  
  
"Are you okay, sweetheart?" Simply, without any histrionics,  
the child shook her head no. Canon holstered his pistol and  
scooped the girl up in his arms.  
  
"Let's get you out of here." He hustled the girl away from the  
scene when she turned her head to look at the dead man. "Don't  
look, honey," Palmer said. He moved quickly out of the room,  
taking the stairs two at a time. Canon paused only once with the  
child, looking at the step that snapped, plunging him into the  
darkness below -- it was perfectly undamaged. He hurried up the  
rest of the staircase, and through the cabin.  
  
Two ATF helicopters hovered over the field, shining spotlights  
down to guide the dozens of agents at work below. Even with the  
impressive noise of the choppers and the engines of the SUV's the  
agents were driving, the loud chorus of the crickets was still  
audible in the twilight. When Canon burst out the front door with  
the girl, all attention immediately focused on him. Alpha and  
Bravo teams trained their weapons on him for half a second before  
they recognized their missing comrade.  
  
Evan ran to greet his partner, and he called forward the EMTs.  
They tried to take the girl from his arms, but Canon would not let  
her go any more than she would release her arms from around his  
neck. Instead, they hustled him away from the cabin just as  
another team in full SWAT gear charged in to clear the building.  
As Palmer and the child rushed toward a waiting transport, a  
cricket landed in the girl's hand. The child smiled at it, laughing  
musically and showing the insect to Palmer. In the growing noise,  
the questions from the medics grew unintelligible, but the man and  
the child were paying little attention at any rate.  
  
The girl held the cricket to her lips and blew, sending it flying  
into the dusk. She smiled up at Palmer and held him tight, and the  
sound of the crickets grew, overtaking all of the other noises. The  
agents looked around in confusion, and only Evan seemed capable  
of making any sort of intuitive leap. He turned back to look at  
Palmer and the orphan girl; they seemed to be glowing in the  
spotlight of one of the choppers.  
  
Then the child laughed, and raised her arms heavenward.  
  
At once, all of the crickets in the field took flight. They moved  
as one, a single organism, a giant living thing. Before Evans's  
startled eyes, the small creatures blocked the light from the  
chopper, as they blocked the light of the setting sun. More and  
more seemed to come, and Evan thought briefly of the plagues in  
the Bible, pestilence of the Old Testament variety. He fell to his  
knees and attempted to shield his eyes from the living fog, but it  
did little good. Through it all, he kept his eyes on his partner and  
the laughing child in his arms. They continued to stand with an air  
of unconcern even as the swarm enveloped them and blacked out  
the sky.  
  
Even then, Evan Davis could hear the child laughing.  
  
  
To Be Continued  
  
  
NEXT: Cracks begin to appear among the residents of  
Graymalkin Lane, while Logan discovers an ancient mystery in  
Alexandria, Egypt. Join me next time for . . .  
  
  
Half Lit World  
Part I: The Library of Echoes  
  
  



	2. The Library of Echoes

Synopsis: Cracks begin to appear among the residents of  
Graymalkin Lane, while Logan discovers an ancient mystery in  
Alexandria, Egypt.  
  
Disclaimer: This story was written purely to entertain, and  
is rated PG-13 for language, mild violence and mature themes.  
It utilizes characters and situations owned by DC Comics,  
Marvel Comics, Stephen King and others without permission.  
No challenge to their copyright is intended, and no profit  
is sought or accepted through distribution of the work.  
  
The previous episodes are available for your reading pleasure at   
the Fonts of Wisdom (http://home.att.net/~lubakmetyk/) ,  
at the Prince of Dreams archive  
(http://www.angelfire.com/mn2/AlexSisterWolf/), and right  
here on fanfiction.net in the X-Men section. I enjoy  
reader criticism tremendously -- drop me a line at  
XanderDG@hotmail.com with your thoughts.  
_________________________________________________________  
  
X-Men: Half Lit World  
  
by  
  
Alexander Greenfield  
  
  
Chapter I: The Library of Echoes  
  
  
1  
  
There were nine rights of initiation in the Hellfire Club.  
They dated back to the late eighteenth century, and were almost  
entirely intact and unchanged. Some argued that the rituals  
originated even earlier in history; that they were first bringing  
the blind into the light before the Tudors tamed the Gael. A very  
few of the most scholarly and aged members whispered that the  
highest right of the order -- the ninth degree -- was first  
practiced in the windy night of the desert long before the  
Carpenter discovered his destiny and tried to save mankind that  
first time.  
  
With each initiation came a degree, and these were  
hierarchical. No one except those enlightened to the  
deepest and most ancient secrets were allowed to be the Knights  
and Rooks, the Bishops and Queens of the most secret of societies.  
Even among these masters of knowledge, discipline and power, there  
was a pecking order. Only the handful illuminated by the ceremony  
of the Ninth Degree were eligible to challenge for the Kingship of  
the organization. Once ascended to the throne, this individual  
set the policies of the powerful order, created the priorities and  
strategies, and in some ways, governed the governors. One became  
the man behind the curtain.  
  
Long before that, though, there were the early degrees.  
Since its modern conception, the Club had been home to the  
highest strata of society. One of the great powers of the order was  
its status as the most elite of the many fraternities of the rich.  
Membership in the Hellfire Club was doled out by invitation only,  
but these allurements were not jealously guarded. Though for  
some time the Circle had been dominated by mutants whose genetic  
makeup invested them with paranormal abilities, the same was not  
true of rank and file members.  
  
For the most part, these dues paying members consisted of  
the rich and the bored: men and women who ran Fortune 500 firms,  
commanded armies and held seats in government. For most of  
their lives, everything had been handed to them, and now they  
wanted a sense of danger and belonging. The Club provided them  
with that. If the ultimate goals of the organization could be  
shouldered by the occasional orgy, the modest use of S&M and the  
utilization of imagery from DeSade, well, that was all right.  
Sebastian Shaw, the Black King and Master of the order put the  
combined membership funds of these dilettantes to good use.  
After all, even he had to take the first degree once.  
  
Shaw looked at his new Initiate. Certainly, they knew each  
other well, and Shaw was convinced that this recruit would reach  
far beyond any of the lower degrees. He knew that the Initiate  
would one day join the Circle, perhaps even as his own  
Lieutenant, dividing the spoils of one war or another. Despite this  
surety, he ordered the Bishops to hold the Initiate (Shaw  
was sure that, had he wanted, the Initiate could have dispatched  
those two rubes with little thought) while the Rooks anointed the  
man. The ritual of the first degree was designed mostly to produce  
a blend of awe and intoxication that would be appealing to the  
filthy rich.  
  
Even though the Initiate had already seen far beyond the  
veil that the first degree assumed was still in place, he reverently  
went through the motions of the ritual. Shaw was pleased by this.  
The Initiate might have demanded to leapfrog the usual steps --  
Magneto had years ago, and the Order was still recovering from  
that debacle. Instead, the new man tasted the small fruits of the  
ceremony, designed only to convince the rich that they might find  
a place to get their rocks off in the Club. When it was over,  
the Initiate followed instructions and swore to allegiance and  
secrecy. When he stood before Shaw and smiled, the Black King  
knew that he had made the correct decision -- he knew that the  
future of the Hellfire Club was assured.  
  
2  
  
Young Haroun Mohamad did not speak or read a word of  
English, and even if he had, the thirteen-year-old almost certainly  
would have had neither the time nor the inclination to bother with  
Dickens. Still, if he did know the great British author, he would  
have been happy to be called the Artful Dodger. Haroun was the  
finest pickpocket on the docks of Alexandria, and now, with the  
Call to Morning Prayer clearing the streets of the Faithful,  
he prepared to ply his trade. Small, in little more than rags,  
he practically disappeared in the abandoned doorway. He seemed  
to be just another beggar boy too tired to harass the tourists.  
Behind the facade, though, his keen and intelligent eyes scanned  
the wealthy visitors as they walked in the Mediterranean breeze.  
The early sun glinted off the water, and the temperature was close  
to perfect. Haroun knew that today would bring a great catch.  
  
Prayer time was always the best. Alexandria was a much  
more devout city than Cairo, and when the mosques filled, the  
streets were virtually cleared of the local populace.  
Experience taught the boy that the worst thing one could  
do was to touch a local -- doing so would earn an enemy for  
life. One could never know when some angry shopkeeper or  
laborer would appear around a corner, forcing an industrious  
young man to make himself scarce. No, far better to focus  
on the foreigners. He watched the oceanside road carefully,  
looking for exactly the right mark.  
  
There were three students chatting gaily in a language  
whose guttural tones Haroun recognized as German. With heavy  
backpacks forcing them to focus on their shoulders, one of them  
would have made a perfect touch. You never went for more than  
a pair, though. It was too dangerous trying to keep track of  
that many eyes. Coming the other way, Haroun spotted an elderly  
couple. They were white of hair and slow of foot, clearly agog  
at the view of the crystal sea. Several teenagers ran up and  
began conversing with the pair just as Haroun was ready to move.  
A tour group was not impossible to touch, but better to take  
them in the narrow streets of the city than a wide and empty  
boulevard. Finally, Haroun's eyes fell on a fantastic mark.  
  
American military guys were perfect. They walked with  
their shoulders broad and chests puffed up, unafraid because  
they were conquerors and protectors. Despite all evidence to  
the contrary, they believed themselves to be the beloved of  
the world, only moments from a private tickertape parade.  
Of course, in their hearts, Haroun knew that they were always  
on alert for a truckload or terrorists with rocket launchers.  
This is why they were excellent sources of income -- the  
slender boy was as far from a threat as one could be.  
  
The man Haroun saw was out of uniform, in blue jeans and  
a flannel shirt despite the heat, and he had wildly bushy hair  
sticking out from under a johnwayne (what the boy called a  
cowboy hat). Still, there was something about the way he carried  
himself; this man was a soldier. With perfect calm, the boy  
stepped onto the thoroughfare, trailing the short, muscular man  
at a discreet distance. He walked just a hair faster, not enough  
to charge the mark, but quickly enough that given time and  
distance, the boy would be upon him. At one point, the man  
stopped, tilting his head attentively. Could Haroun have been  
made? Just in case, the boy sauntered to lean casually on the  
ocean wall. In his peripheral vision he saw that the man was  
only lighting a cigar -- definitely a soldier.  
  
Carrying only a single small duffel bag, the man strolled  
along at leisure. He did not look left or right, apparently  
disinterested in either sea or city. Good, Haroun thought,  
a man with places to go. The boy increased his pace slightly,  
continuing to use the light step his father taught him. Once,  
as a test, he filched a traffic officer in broad daylight and  
the man never heard a thing. Haroun fell in immediately behind  
the smoking man, matching him footstep for footstep. The bulge  
in his hip pocket answered the only question that mattered:  
no money belt; this man carried a wallet. Haroun grinned and  
reached forward, tasting the lunch he would buy his family.  
  
The world spun madly for only a moment, then he was  
facing the soldier upside down. It took Haroun a moment to  
realize that the man was holding him in the air by his ankle. He  
grinned at the boy around his cigar, his eyes shadowed by the brim  
of his hat. After puffing on the stogie and seeming to ponder the  
predicament, he spoke to the child in a gravelly voice that was  
perfectly friendly.  
  
"You oughta be more careful, kid," he said. "You could  
lose a hand that way." The man gently set the boy on the ground,  
and Haroun jumped up, staring at the man in fear. Instead of  
receiving the cuff around his ears he expected, the man tipped his  
hat and turned around, continuing on his way. After considering  
his options, the Artful Dodger of Alexandria, Egypt came to the  
only sensible conclusion. He ran like hell in the other direction.  
  
***  
  
Logan heard the kid run away and chuckled to himself.  
The truth is that the boy hadn't been half bad. Logan hadn't heard  
him until he was maybe twenty yards out. There were seasoned  
professionals in spandex outfits who couldn't say they had ever  
matched that. A mutant, Logan's abilities were not flashy or  
pyrotechnic. He could heal really fast. He could hear pretty good  
(and the rest of his senses weren't half bad either). The truly  
nifty stuff he could do wasn't naturally occurring; it was learned.  
More or less. Logan grimaced and rubbed the back of his hand  
  
It had been a long stretch of years since he had been in  
Alexandria, and that boy proved one thing beyond the shadow of a  
doubt. A city could get image consultants, put tourism ads on  
CNN and chase the hookers out of the town square, but you  
couldn't change the soul of a town no matter how much you tried.  
No, Logan thought, it didn't work in New York, and it wouldn't  
happen here. He didn't put much stock in hoodoo or the  
metaphysical, and understand, this from a man who had set his  
own two feet in Hell. That Hell. Still, he knew a thing or two  
about the vibes of places, and Alexandria would never be a resort.  
  
He breathed deeply, inhaling the not entirely unpleasant  
smell of the place. The salted air of the Mediterranean dominated  
everything, of course, but there were plenty of other scents. As  
with all cities of any size, there was decay. Decaying garbage,  
mostly. Decaying plants and paint and food, too. Decaying people.  
There were perfumes and spices indescribably exotic. He smelled  
cooking stews and baking, sweating and labor, incense and  
laundry. Underneath it all was the smell he liked the most about  
the old world. It was a kind of olfactory sensation that he could  
almost never find in America, except occasionally on hallowed  
land in the Southwest.  
  
Back in the States he had spoken about this once with  
another spandex guy. The superhero, Daredevil had senses like  
his, and like Logan, he'd spent some time in the Far East. The  
men had agreed that there was a sensation they got in the ancient  
cities they visited. They always identified it as a smell, but  
it might have been something different that they were only reading  
as a scent. It could have been something from the realm of the  
sixth sense, some kind of collective memory tied inextricably to  
place. Daredevil and Logan agreed that when they were in the houses  
of the truly old that there was an undercurrent, a smell that read  
a little bit like dust, or like the stacks of a library, or perhaps  
like the unique odor of sand in the oven in the last seconds  
before it transmutes into molten glass.  
  
The odor beneath Alexandria was one of these smells.  
They were fairly common all over what Kitty would have told him  
at length was the classical world. Of course, Logan thought, here  
there is an extra layer to the sensation. In this place there was  
the undeniable aroma of soot, smoke and fire.  
  
There had been several Egyptian governments since he had  
last been in town, so naturally the names of all the streets had  
changed. In his experience, Logan found that one of the first things  
despots did when they came to power (always the result of being  
"duly elected," of course) was to change the names of the streets to  
whatever set of other despots they most revered. He pulled the slip  
of paper with the address out of his shirt pocket and looked at it  
carefully. Though he did not read Arabic, Logan had an excellent  
memory of shapes, and could recognize the lines and circles of the  
letters if he saw them again. His instinct proved correct, the  
narrow avenue leading away from the ocean was his turnoff. He  
ambled down the road into the heart of the ancient city.  
  
***  
  
Now, this was what Logan wanted out of an experience in  
foreign lands. He walked through the bazar in the heat of the  
noon sun. By the time he had passed all the way through, his  
small bag could not zip shut, and he was eating a delicious  
concoction that tasted of rosemary and cumin. He didn't know  
what the paste consisted of, but thought that maybe it was  
better that way. Logan looked again at his directions and  
continued on his way.  
  
As he moved through the living streets, he noted a  
number of signs pasted to every possible surface -- from  
telephone poles to the doors of shops. Some sort of political  
leaflet, he supposed, but it struck him as odd nonetheless. Though  
he did not know the language, it appeared to him that the notices,  
which were becoming more and more frequent despite the fact that  
he was moving away from the center of the city, were all upside  
down. There was something else about them, too, but . . .  
  
At last he arrived at the address he had been seeking.  
Logan looked up at the building, and approved of the choice. It  
was close to the dig site, but far enough away that it would not be  
plagued by the constant clanking noise of the excavation. Better,  
the apartment was situated above a bakery, and there was no better  
way to awaken than that. The stairs to the apartment were right  
next door to the entrance of the shop, and as Logan approached, a  
little boy stepped out of the eatery. He was attempting to carry a  
laden tray somewhat precariously balanced, and turned to take it  
up the stairs. The child almost bumped into Logan, but smiled  
when he looked up at him. Logan grinned back.  
  
"That for the Doc?" The child burst into laughter, and  
Logan raised an eyebrow, unsure of what the kid found so amusing  
about the question. After a moment, the boy managed to stammer.  
  
"Doctor Faraway, yes. Yes." He degenerated into the  
giggles again. Logan reached into his wallet and pulled out two  
bills. He took the tray from the laughing boy and handed the child  
the money. "No change," the boy blurted. He was nearly  
hyperventilating with laughter.  
  
"Uhm. Don't need any," Logan said.  
  
"Can I?"  
  
"Can you what?" The boy reached up, and Logan finally  
understood. He sighed and squatted down on his haunches. The  
child's chuckling subsided, and his face took on a look akin to  
wonder. Reverently, he touched Logan's mutton chop sideburns as   
though petting a rabbit. After a moment, he exploded with   
laughter and ran back into the bakery. Logan stood, shaking his   
head, and went up the stairs.  
  
There was only one door, and he knocked on it.   
  
"Yes, Akbar," came the familiar female voice. "Come in."  
  
Logan opened the door and walked inside. The room was  
filled with open windows that carried in the scents of the  
city, gauzy curtains blowing gently in the breeze. Dominating  
the view in the distance was the dig site. A red cloud hung  
over it -- the dust raised by ceaseless activity. The space  
was dominated by a large oak table completely covered by books.  
Indeed, the entire room could pass for a library after an  
earthquake. Yet even in the apparent chaos, Logan detected  
patterns. This was a workroom.  
  
"Just leave it on the table," came a voice from the  
bedroom. Logan grinned and did as he was told, then he loudly  
pulled out a chair and sat. "Your money is on the table, darling."   
The voice originated in the bedroom, and it seemed distracted.   
Logan tilted his head to look through the door and saw his old  
friend's long gray hair. She was sitting at a small desk writing  
furiously. He made no response, and there was silence. Finally,  
after a minute or more, he cleared his throat. Apparently, that  
sound was enough. The woman sat bolt upright, and slowly turned  
around. Logan smiled at her from the living area, and she was up  
in a flash.  
  
"You son of a bitch," she cried. Even with reflexes as fast  
as anyone on earth, Logan was barely up fast enough for Juniper  
Faraway's charge from the bedroom. She grabbed him in a hug so  
fierce it nearly took his breath, kissing him on both cheeks. Then  
she grabbed his head in her hands and looked at him in the eyes.  
"It has been an age, old boy!"  
  
"That it has, darlin'." She touched her forehead to his, and  
for a moment they just stood. Then she released him and moved  
around into the kitchen. "This calls for a toast."  
  
"We're in Alexandria," Logan said. "They tend to frown  
on bars 'round these parts." Juniper smiled at him, and pulled  
two glasses and a bottle of absinth out of the cupboard.  
  
"You are right, or course, old friend. I had to pull a  
number of strings to get this flown in from Greece. But I knew I  
would need it for celebrating soon."  
  
"Knew I was coming by, didja?"  
  
"You flatter yourself, Logan," she laughed. "No, it is  
synchronicity, I tell you. Absolute synchronicity! You have come  
at a wonderful moment in archaeology, old friend." She came  
back to the table and set down the glasses, her excitement  
palpable. Logan couldn't help but smile at her enthusiasm; she  
was almost sixty now, but had the same excitement about her craft  
as when he'd met her.  
  
"What'd you find, Junie?"  
  
"That's Doctor Faraway, to a heathen like you!" She  
poured two fingers of the elixir into both of the glasses, then   
corked the bottle and looked at Logan triumphantly. "But I'll  
tell you anyway, purely for old times sake."  
  
"Course," he responded. Faraway raised her glass, and  
Logan responded in kind, clinking them together. She only smiled  
at him for a long time.  
  
"I've finally found it, Logan," she said at last. "I have  
discovered the great hall of the library of Alexander . . . and it  
is completely intact!"   
  
  
3  
  
"Oh, God, chere! Slow it down! You gonna kill me!!"  
  
Kitty groaned. She put the pillow over her ears what  
seemed like hours ago, but nothing was thick enough to drown up  
the commotion. Back and forth they had gone, up and down the  
hall outside her room, screaming and shouting at the top of their  
lungs. It was Sunday morning, and Kitty Pryde wanted nothing  
more than to go back to sleep. Not bloody likely.  
  
"That's it, Cajun," Rogue shouted. "Ah can't stop this  
time!" The noise grew as they came toward her room, and faded  
as they continued down the hall. Doppler effect, Kitty thought.  
That's the Doppler effect. Gambit screamed at the top of his lungs  
and Rogue cackled evilly. Kitty decided then and there to ask  
Professor Xavier if she could get a space in one of the outbuildings  
on the grounds. Hell, even a garage would be nice. The happy  
couple came back up the hall chortling all the way, and Kitty  
pushed off the blankets back and sat up. She ran her fingers  
through her short hair and rubbed her eyes, standing to stretch.  
  
Her room had changed recently. Sure, there was the matter  
of the mansion being destroyed, and the time in England, but for a  
long time her domicile was the bedroom of a child. It was only  
recently that Kitty (Katherine, Kat, something else damn it) took  
the posters down, threw out the junk jewelry boxes and the frilly  
pink things. There were a couple of bookcases overflowing. They  
contained volumes on Jewish mysticism, cabbalah, the Torah. For  
the first time since she was a child in Hebrew School Kitty had  
been trying to discover something about her roots. While the rest  
of the residents on the hall had gone to the City for the weekend,  
she had stayed in, preferring to read.  
  
There was only a single covering on the wall, a print by  
Edward Hopper. The painting was of a nearly empty movie theater  
cast in hues of red and gold, with a lone woman standing off to  
the side. She wore a blue usher's coat, and looked down  
distractedly, as though she were guilty about something. Maybe  
saddened. Kitty stared at the lithograph as she slipped into  
her pajama bottoms and a tee shirt. As always, her eyes were   
drawn to the woman's hand. It was drawn close to her face, perhaps  
caressing her cheek. On some level, a pre-conscious one, Kitty  
thought that the hand held a secret, one she was always just  
shy of understanding.  
  
"Darlin' you are absolutely crazy!" The children came  
down the hall again, startling Kitty out of her reverie. That they  
were both older and more well-regarded than she only made things  
more annoying. She looked at the painting one last time stepped  
out into the hall.  
  
The mansion at 1407 Graymalkin Lane was a well-appointed  
place. The man who owned it had good taste and money to burn,  
so the antique furnishings were somewhere north of expensive and  
into the realm of precious. The first thing Kitty noticed was  
that Rogue and Gambit had been wise enough to move all the  
obstructions out of the dormitory hall. The second thing  
she comprehended was Rogue's piercing screech.  
  
"Look out, doll!" Kitty turned her head to see Gambit  
coming up the hall in a wheelchair at a speed that looked to be  
around sixty-five miles an hour. He had attained this suicidal  
speed with Rogue's assistance. The young woman with the white  
stripe in her hair was often his partner in crime these days. She  
hovered behind the chair, flying and pushing it along. They were  
going quickly enough that Rogues long auburn hair was billowing  
behind her. Though all the boys whispered about how cute the white  
streak running down the middle was, Kitty persisted in the opinion  
that it made her look like a skunk. Naturally, the wheelchair was  
aimed directly at her, approaching like some half-assed projectile.  
  
Neither Rogue's flying nor the speed with which the chair  
was bearing down on her particularly surprised Kitty. The  
Graymalkin house may not have had the largest concentration of  
mutants with superhuman powers in the entire world, but it *had*  
to be somewhere in the top ten. Sure, Rogue could fly, she had  
strength enough to juggle cars, and the faintest touch of her skin  
was enough to suck your whole consciousness away. Remy, who  
insisted on the arrogant code name Gambit, could endow normal  
household objects with powerful energy and toss them around to  
blow things up. This gift looked very cool, but it had little in  
the way of practical application unless one was in the business  
of super heroing. Of course, they were all in exactly that line  
of work, and Remy contributed more to society here than he might  
have if he were a bouncer on some Mississippi riverboat casino.  
  
Kitty was not without extranormal abilities herself. Just as  
they bore down on her, she glared at Gambit and Rogue as she used  
her power and went out of phase with the rest of the world. The  
chair and its occupant passed harmlessly through her while Rogue  
continued her ceaseless laughter and flew overhead. She turned  
around to grin at Kitty while she floated down the hall. For his  
part, Gambit hollered like the devil when he thought he was going  
to hit the wall. Kitty figured it would serve him right, but Rogue  
caught him in time.  
  
"Good Lord, mon chere, I t'ought sure we was gonna flatten you  
out!" Gambit smiled broadly as Rogue wheeled him back up the  
hall. The girl walked this time, perhaps finding bit more control  
on two feet. Kitty crossed her arms and frowned at the couple.  
  
"Ah'm so sorry, Kat! We jest got a little carried away!"  
Kitty really wanted to lay into the terrible twosome, but somehow  
she just couldn't find the fury it would have required. She was as  
awake as she could be now, and besides, Remy looked pathetic  
enough as it was. The device on his badly broken leg resembled a  
large steel birdcage. It extended from the middle of his thigh to  
his ankle with spokes running in and out like some obscene  
Jacob's Ladder. Gambit's recent battle with a self-described "bad  
guy" over some insult or slight that Kitty could not discern  
(though it was probably something to do with Honor or Pride or  
General All-Purpose Villainy), uncovered a heretofore unknown  
weakness. Remy got hit by a car, shattering his leg. Though  
Professor Xavier had access to healing technology far in advance  
of the current medicine, Gambit's leg had been broken badly enough  
that he would be wheeling himself around for some time to come.  
Or Rogue would, anyway.  
  
"We wake you up, sugah?" she asked. "You look real  
tired."  
  
"Thanks a lot. You guys are having some fun, I see."  
  
"Yeah, Rogue here done took me hostage and made her  
own Danger Room right here in da hallway. It's kinda like a  
wheelbarrow race."  
  
"Uh-huh. Well. That's just great, guys. Do you think you  
could, I don't know, possibly go play outside? I believe I saw  
some crawdads you can suck on in duh crick," she said, mocking  
Remy's Cajun drawl. "It's early and normal people are sleeping."  
  
"Really, Kat, Ah'm sorry. We didn't even know anybody  
was still . . ." Rogue couldn't finish before Remy cut her off.  
  
"We aren't normal people, anyway. We da X-Men." Kitty  
looked at Gambit for a moment, realizing that even the shortest  
time spent doing anything at all with him would be enough to drive  
her absolutely insane. He smiled rakishly at her, and Kitty thought  
of a line from "Pulp Fiction." That'd have to be one  
motherfuckin' charming pig.  
  
"Why are you even awake, Remy? She I understand;  
Rogue's an early riser. But you? You realize it's before noon,  
don't you?"  
  
"I've gone and turned over a new leaf, Miss Pryde," he said.  
"Hurtin' my leg has really caused me to reevaluate my sense of  
priorities, you know? 'Sides, did you know dat on the Internet  
you can gamble twenty-four hours a day?"  
  
"That's just . . . sweet. You guys know what day it is, right?  
Ding-ding! That's right, boys and girls, it is Sunday! And what is  
Sunday? Hm? Come on, you both know the answer."  
  
"Why don't you tell us, cherie? You was da child prostitute,"  
Remy said. Rogue snorted and quickly backed away from the man in  
the wheelchair, not wanting to be near him for the fireworks that  
would certainly follow. Kitty, not fooled in the slightest by his  
guileless face, only tilted her head and blinked at him.  
  
"Child prostitute?"  
  
"Ain't dat da word? Child prostitute?"  
  
"Prodigy, Remy," Kitty said. "Child prodigy."  
  
"Hm."  
  
"Ah think what she's saying," Rogue offered, "is that  
Sunday is the day of rest, so why don't we knock it off so Kitty  
can sleep."  
  
"Two points for the pretty girl with the stripe," Kitty  
responded. "I'm up now anyway, guys. Have fun, uhm, running in  
the hall. Just not with scissors in your hand; you'll put your  
eye out." Kitty turned to walk down the hall to the stairwell.  
Desire for sleep had given way to a need for breakfast.  
  
"T'anks mama," said Remy.  
  
"And don't jump on the bed," Kitty advised over her  
shoulder.   
  
"An' you better not go swimmin' for half-an-hour after  
you eat!" called Rogue. Kitty walked down the stairs with a grin,  
and before she had descended even one flight, she heard the pair  
zooming up and down the hall again. Why begrudge them their  
fun, she thought, at least somebody was having it.  
  
4  
  
The Happy Hippo Cafe practically glowed in the morning  
sunshine. An airstream diner right out of the fifties, the sun  
glinted off of it in such a way that the business people hustling  
by were illuminated by the reflection off the chrome. There was  
some level of modest perfection in its location. A squat  
structure dwarfed by the Manhattan skyscrapers that surrounded it,  
the eatery managed to find the only direct sunlight in the area.  
All through the early hours of the day, it basked in the sun like  
its massive African namesake.  
  
Scott Summers watched the people moving by. He sat in a  
window booth awaiting the arrival of his wife. A good-looking  
man in his late-twenties, Scott was big enough that few people had  
the inclination to ask him questions about the ruby red wrap  
around shades that he always wore. His presence was aloof and  
commanding, born of years of leadership experience and self-  
discipline. This appeared to be a man without the time or patience  
for silly questions, even if his shades were goofy looking. It  
wasn't always the case, of course. There had been questions back  
at the orphanage. Scott had been asked plenty of questions,  
indeed.  
  
He took another bite of the half-eaten danish in front of  
him, chasing it with a swallow of the hot coffee that the  
officious Asian waiter had been "warming up" every few  
moments. Scott was still elegantly dressed, as he had been when  
he left Jean the night before. He wore a black Armani with a  
turtleneck underneath, looking to all the world like the richest  
beatnik alive. He saw a flash of red move by outside, and  
moments later, his erstwhile wife came in the front door.  
Naturally, she didn't look around for the party she had come to  
meet. She turned right to him and made a beeline for Scott  
with a broad smile on her face.  
  
"Hey, lover," she said. She kissed him before sliding into  
the seat opposite, and he grinned at her broadly despite his subtle  
annoyance. "Sorry I'm late. I went over to Graymalkin last night  
and the Professor and I spent the whole evening in nostalgia land.  
I didn't even get home until after three in the morning."  
  
"Sounds exciting."   
  
"That's a laugh." She lowered her voice. "Though I would  
imagine that anyone else would have thought we were both nuts.  
Two telepaths yakking at each other probably appears to have all  
the animation of a wax museum." Like a teenager, her hand found  
his on the table. Scott looked at her from behind his glasses for a  
moment before smiling and lacing his fingers with hers.  
  
"What about you," Jean continued.  
  
"Hm?"  
  
"How was the party?"  
  
"Oh, you know. Once you've been to one bachelor party,  
you've pretty much been to them all. Drinking, dancing,  
strippers -- the usual."  
  
"Scintillating. I've got to meet this guy sometimes."  
  
"Absolutely. You and Rory would get along great." Scott  
looked at his watch abruptly. "We really need to get going though.  
We have to run the kids back to Xavier's."  
  
"Oh. You're right, let me just . . ." Jean reached across the  
table to grab a big hunk of Scott's danish, putting the massive bite  
in her mouth. Scott smiled at her and walked up to the front of the  
restaurant to pay at the register. He must not have noticed the  
look of wide-eyed horror that came across Jean's face when she tried  
to swallow.  
  
She tried to call after Scott as he moved away, but no  
sound escaped her throat. Desperately, her hands fumbled on the  
table to grab the coffee, spilling more than she managed to keep in  
the cup. She tried to swallow some, but the hot liquid only spilled  
down her face, burning painfully. Jean tried to squeal at the pain  
from the coffee, but no noise escaped. The pastry was lodged in  
her throat, and nothing would get it free.  
  
Jean used her telepathy to scream out at Scott. They had  
enjoyed an easy rapport for many years, but this time her white  
knight did not come running. Instead, he stood at the register,  
oblivious to her psychic cries for held, calmly pulling out his  
wallet. In a full on panic, instinctively clawing at her throat,  
she did the only thing she knew how.  
  
There was a long counter at the front of the restaurant  
where single folks sat to eat the Happy Hippo's diner fare. With  
the morning dragging on, there were only four men there now,  
placidly chewing their cholesterol busting hash browns and  
sausages. When all of their food flew away from them, smashing  
into the opposite wall, the men drew back in horror. For a moment,  
the entire space fell into chaos, plates and glasses flying as  
though possessed by some mythical poltergeist. Several people  
charged from the restaurant in fear, while others rushed to the  
windows, convinced that some super hero duel must be right around  
the corner.  
  
Scott looked around at the commotion, his instincts for  
battle honed. He finally turned back to where Jean was sitting,  
and his eyes narrowed. The Asian waiter stood behind her. He was  
manhandling her like a rag doll, jerking her up and down. Scott  
battled through the crowd, pushing everyone out of his way with  
ease. He arrived at the table with his hand cocked back, ready to  
pound the slight man into oblivion. Jean was the worse for wear  
from the attack, her normally beautiful pale skin giving way to a  
sickly shade of blue. Objects flew through the air in a windless  
cyclone.  
  
"Let her go!" The waiter paid no attention to the tall man  
in the wrap-around shades. Instead he continued the assault on  
Jean, his face a mask of concentration. Scott lifted his hands,  
prepared to pull Jean to safety and revenge her upon the little  
man. Just as he stepped forward, a large piece of danish  
exploded from her mouth, and Jean collapsed in the man's arms.  
Scott frowned.  
  
The waiter gently sank to his knees, taking Jean with him.  
She coughed and gagged furiously, sucking in as much air as she  
could. As quickly as the kinetic storm of material in the restaurant  
had begun, there was a loud crash as every airborne object in the  
place dropped to the floor. The remaining patrons and staff stared  
at the trio with narrowed eyes, suspicious and frightened.  
  
Scott kneeled down as well, and Jean lurched forward into  
his arms. She wept, big wretched sobs of frustration and fear.  
Scott ran his fingers through her long red hair.  
  
"Shhh," he said. "It's all right. Come on, Jean. It'll be  
okay." They rocked on the floor, oblivious to the commotion  
around him. The waiter stayed on his knees, breathing heavily.  
He puffed out his cheeks on a final exhale and stood slowly.  
When the wait staff came forward, he waved them off to avoid any  
more of a crowd forming around the couple.  
  
"I'll make it," Jean said. "Just give me a second, 'kay?"  
Scott only held her, his face miles away, unreadable. The waiter  
reached down, offering the pair a hand up. Jean accepted, while  
Scott stood on is own, continuing to regard the man with  
consternation.  
  
"You all right?" the waiter asked.  
  
"I'm getting there. Thank you so much. You saved my  
life."  
  
"Nah. Your friend here would've done the same after he  
punched my lights out." The waiter smiled at Scott, and after a  
moment, the mutant smiled back from behind his glasses.  
  
"Sorry," he said.  
  
"No worries." The waiter grinned at Jean. "Let that be a  
lesson to you."  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Don't eat off of other people's plates. Next time," he  
advised, "you buy your own."  
  
Jean smiled weakly, and Scott pulled out his wallet in another  
attempt to settle the tab. The smiling waiter waived him off. "On  
the house."  
  
"You sure? It's no problem . . ."  
  
"Absolutely," the waiter interrupted. He turned his  
attention to Jean. "You've had a rough morning. Just promise  
to come back real soon."  
  
"We will," she said. "Just make sure I stay away from the  
pastries."  
  
Scott and Jean made their way to the door under the  
paranoid scrutiny of the other patrons. Jean became sure that  
there was something otherworldly about the staring moon faces,  
something sleek and stupid and hungry. Scott kept his arm  
protectively around her as they exited, unafraid of anything. The  
waiter stood looking silently after them. After a moment, he  
began cleaning up the mess.  
  
5  
  
He knew it was coming long before he even rounded the  
corner. He knew it was coming because it had come so many  
times before, from around so many different corners and curves,  
alcoves and doorways. There were a number of signs. The other  
kids would desperately attempt not to look at him, and their  
painful efforts at being inconspicuous made them all the more  
noticeable. People had always stared at Kenny Thompson. He  
was not unusual looking in any obvious way. Perhaps he was  
small for his age, and his hair had the tendency to stand on end  
all winter long, but nothing more than that. No, when the other  
boys and girls set their jaws and furrowed their brows in  
concentrated effort not to look at him, it meant something bad  
was headed his way from just around the bend.  
  
Kenny's backpack was slung over one shoulder, and he  
looped his arm through the other side, making sure that it was  
zipped up. Whatever was coming, he wanted to make sure that his  
stuff didn't blast all over the hallway again. Whatever torture  
was awaiting him would only be worsened if he had to spend the  
aftermath picking up his books.   
  
Worse than the laughing classmates were the helpful ones.  
There was always some girl, a pretty one who was ready to help  
him pick up his books and give him a smile of commiseration.  
"You'll get through this," the look always seemed to say. Or  
maybe it was saying, "boys will be boys, keep a stiff upper lip."  
Or possibly, "why don't you stand up for yourself you miserable  
little shit?"  
  
With his blond hair long and unruly, the boy didn't look  
anywhere near his thirteen years. He was smart, but more and  
more, he regretted skipping to high school. He was freak enough  
around kids his own age. Kenny wore corduroys more and more  
often, and with what was coming, he did not regret that decision at  
all. The gentle zwhip-zwhip sound of the fabric on his legs acted  
as a calming noise, like one of the goofy tapes dad listened to  
when he was trying to quit smoking. As he came to the corner in  
the third floor hall, he felt the tingling feeling of his hair  
standing up. Despite the fact that he could expect to be the  
recipient of a wedgie or get stuffed in a locker again when he  
rounded the bend, Kenny sped up, keeping his legs close together.  
By the time he came to the corner, his hair was almost sticking  
straight up.  
  
As soon as he came around, he saw Bruce Moyers in his  
letter jacket. The large senior was standing with his posse,  
talking in a forced and ridiculously affected ebonics entirely  
out of keeping with the traditional accent of a Weschester kid.  
Regardless, Bruce had some kind of internal radar at work.  
Without ever turning from the chick he was scamming on, his right  
foot came out to trip Kenny and send him sprawling to the floor.  
The other kids watched in unapologetic fascination.  
  
Kenny saw the foot in plenty of time to avoid it if he  
wished, but now he no longer wanted to. Indeed, he veered toward  
Bruce to be absolutely sure of falling flat on his face. In the  
scant moments before the contact, he noticed the other kids' grins.  
He saw Sheila Lancaster lean to whisper in Doug Philips' ear.  
More than anything else, though, Kenny focused on the  
outstretched foot of Bruce Moyers.  
  
The very instant that his foot struck Bruce's, there was a loud  
pop in the hall. The noise echoed like a backfire, or the sound of a  
starter's pistol. Kenny felt he was falling in slow motion, a smile  
spreading on his face. The other kids instinctively flinched at the  
loud crack, and Bruce made a high-pitched screech that made  
Kenny think of the time Mrs. Hanahan found a frog in her desk in fifth  
grade. An ozone smell filled the air, and the flash of static charge  
when their legs met was as bright as the bulb on a camera. The pale   
flourescent lights dimmed for a moment as Kenny was falling.  
  
Kenny's face struck the floor hard enough that he was  
dazed for a moment, his ears ringing. He tasted blood, and a  
search with his tongue made him realize that his lip was split  
pretty good. After a moment, he realized that the ringing in his  
ears was only part of the noise filling his consciousness. The fire  
alarm was going off as well, and there was the ceaseless sound of  
Bruce's screaming. Kenny looked up and saw four or five  
members of the boy's posse carrying the writhing boy away. His  
leg was smoking slightly.   
  
Kenny was peripherally aware of Sheila leaning down to  
see if he was all right. To say something profound to him about  
how this wouldn't last forever, about how boys will be boys, and  
Bruce isn't usually such a creep. He looked at her, and saw her  
pert little smile fall away. She stood and backed away from the  
boy with his hair standing perfectly on end. There was something  
about the way he smiled at her despite the blood flowing freely  
from his nose and mouth. It frightened her. It scared Sheila badly.  
  
6  
  
The kitchen was on the west side of the main house, and  
with the lights off it was still dark at this time of day. The space  
was fit for a gourmet, featuring the finest cookware and most  
elegant cutlery. However, this was the home of a rotating cast of  
young people ranging from their early teens to their mid-twenties,  
so the implements that received the most use were the microwave  
and a large pot that was permanently stained ramen noodle brown.   
Kitty dug around in the freezer, finally settling on some waffles for  
her morning nosh. She shut the door and turned around to drop  
her food in the toaster and pour herself a cup of coffee.   
  
There was a large round table in the breakfast nook, and  
Kitty went to sit down. Xavier subscribed to a variety of  
newspapers from around the country, and he always left them  
conspicuously on the table. It was an attempt to get his students to  
focus on the world outside. She sat with her hands steepled in front  
of her, fingertips touching lightly, paying focused attention to the  
slim ray of sunlight that had just begun its slow trek across the  
room. Dust motes crisscrossed the sunbeam, each individual  
particle identifiable among the uncountable number that filled it.  
From Kitty's position across the room, the thin column of light  
almost appeared to be a solid, dancing thing. Her brow  
furrowed when she considered how like the column of light she  
became when she used her power to become insubstantial. She  
was in the world, perhaps, but not of it.  
  
Kitty sipped her coffee and looked through the papers. In  
all her years around Graymalkin, only she and Scott ever really  
seemed interested in the outside worlds of politics, culture and the  
universe at large. Certainly, there was a great interest in the place  
of mutants in society, but this was really a part of their own milieu.  
No, for the most part, the X-Men, canny and otherwise, all lived in  
an ivory tower. Judging from the front pages of the papers, if  
Professor Xavier's intention was to pull their minds away from  
stratospheric super hero concerns, then the daily news was the  
wrong way to go about it. Heroes and villains were everywhere,  
fighting in the streets, in the air and on the sea. She groaned, and  
thought about taking a vacation.  
  
Finally, she settled on the Village Voice -- it could always  
be trusted to act as a diversion from weighty issues. When in  
doubt, the editorial staff down in the Village would just make up  
their own righteous indignation. As always, she opened the paper  
to the ribald advice columns in the back ("I'm A Left-Handed  
Lesbian, Where Do I Find A Good Vibrator That's Easy To  
Hold?"), followed shortly thereafter by the mildly titillating "entre  
nous" personal ads ("Dom Seeks Sub For Torturous Good Time").  
While she was scanning the pages in the back, she came across an  
advertisement that captured her eye. It was sandwiched between  
the more and more ubiquitous advertisements seeking human  
guinea pigs for clinical trials, and the equally suicidal ones  
seeking bike messengers in Manhattan. Judging from the first line  
of the ad, Kitty was exactly the target audience.  
  
MUTANTS  
Writer seeks interviews with demonstrable mutants about growing  
up different for upcoming fiction project. Previously published in  
The Atlantic, Maxim, Playboy, others. Discretion assured.  
  
Below that there was a number to call. She stared at the ad  
for some time. Obviously, she couldn't yak with some soapbox  
rider about the pain and angst of a mutant youth. She was an X-  
Man after all. She had a higher calling. Still, the Dream of  
mutant-human harmony was more achievable through talk than  
through explosive battles in the middle of Times Square. The  
Professor might not even mind; Kitty was articulate, cultured and  
intelligent -- who better to act as a sort of stealth spokesperson  
for the cause. Besides, how many kids can say that they've been  
to other planets before their twentieth birthday. Before their  
fourteenth, to be technical about it. Kitty had a childhood  
that made running away to join the circus look like a prudent and  
conservative decision. More than that, though, there was the  
burning desire to simply talk to somebody who was not directly  
involved in the mad opera of life that seemed to revolve around  
Graymalkin Lane.  
  
It was only a quick conversation on the phone. What could  
be the harm in that?   
  
Just that fast, the potent cocktail of being angry, tired and  
bored had convinced her. Kitty crossed the kitchen, retrieved her  
lukewarm eggos and picked up the phone. She dialed, nearly  
hanging up after the first ring. She persisted instead, and after the  
fourth ring, an answering machine picked up. Kitty had already  
formed a mental image of the ad writer -- a sort of John Updike  
clone with John Grisham eyes. She imagined a man looking to  
write a Great American Novel, a post-modern Gatsby about the  
alienation of the most marginalized group in contemporary society.  
Rather than the gruff, Hemingway voice she had been expecting,  
she was amused to hear a young woman who sounded rather like  
herself.  
  
"Hi. You've reached Rose Walker. Leave me a message  
after the beep." After the tone, Kitty did just that.   
  
  
7  
  
"There were three fires, each more intense than the last,"  
Juniper said. "People have always been frightened of knowledge.   
They have always preferred to live their lives in the dark, unaware  
of the true nature of their half lit world. The Library of Alexandria  
was the greatest repository of knowledge that the world has ever  
known."  
  
"So naturally every third tyrant 'round these parts wanted it  
gone."  
  
"Worse than that, old friend. Every third despot tried to  
erase its very existence from the history of the earth. The first was  
Rome, of course. Old Julius himself burned the library to the  
ground out of love for Cleopatra. The last time was in the fifth  
century. Do you know Hypatia?"  
  
"Nope," Logan said. "I knew one once, but I don't tell the  
tale in mixed company."  
  
"She was a mathematician -- the very paradigm of evil in  
that day and age. A group of angry monks burned her to death on  
the ashes of the library for her heretical teachings. They say that  
she had discovered the basic algebra of the universe using the  
Great Hall of the library as a guide. This shook the foundations  
of the Faith so that they felt the only rational response was to  
burn the whole thing to the ground and salt the earth where it  
stood. For fifteen-hundred years the notion that Hyapatia's  
discovery was lost to the ages has been treated as doctrine. Now, I  
know differently."  
  
The wind shifted, carrying in the sounds of pick and shovel  
from the dig site. Juniper split her lunch with Logan, a delicious  
concoction of garbanzo beans and spices spread over pita. The  
food had long since been consumed, as had half of the powerful  
absinth. Though he enjoyed drinking, it was virtually impossible  
for Logan to become drunk due to the peculiarities of his  
physiology. For her part, Juniper's tolerance was born only of  
years of practice. Even so, the combination of opiates and alcohol  
that made up the legendary liquor had certainly served to loosen  
the both of them. Both taciturn by nature, Logan and Juniper had  
indulged in a marathon of conversation, and the high Mediterranean  
sun had already given way to the more subdued tones of early  
evening. She smiled at him and refilled their glasses.  
  
"Okay, Junie, what'd you find?"  
  
"We were digging at the site of one of the grain depots  
where volumes were hidden from the Caesars when I discovered  
something . . ." She paused, attempting to find the word "I found  
something incredible. I found a map to the Great Hall of the  
Library of Echoes."  
  
Logan frowned. In his brief time spent among  
archeologists years ago, he heard whispers of the Library of  
Echoes, but it was treated as myth, or fantasy. He looked at  
Juniper intently. "You sure you want another glass, darlin'?  
You're talking about finding a legend. There wasn't ever really a  
fourth library in Alexandria."  
  
"No? Come now, old friend. The greatest minds of  
geometry and cosmology were in residence here for hundreds of  
years. Yet while every other discipline in Alexandria produced the  
most important works of classical culture, their combined efforts  
led to nothing? No, Logan, what they produced was incredible.  
Perhaps more important than anything else in antiquity."  
  
She leaned forward, looking deep into his eyes in the  
fading light. Logan smiled uncomfortably at his old compatriot,  
taken aback by her intensity. "What'd they find? That earth ain't  
the center of the universe?"  
  
"Close, Logan. I believe that they found the thing that *is*  
at the center. Not just the center of the universe, no. They found  
the center of everything." She stood and came around the table.  
"Come, I'll show you."  
  
***  
  
The streets were quieter as they moved through them.  
Shopkeeps were closing, and the vendors were folding their tables  
and pulling in their wares for the night. As they moved closer and  
closer to the dig site, there were more and more of the odd  
handwritten signs glued up. The strange inverted arabic continued  
to strike Logan, but Juniper paid the signs no mind. He brushed  
off his concern. Too much time in the spandex club, he figured.  
  
As they walked through the twilight, Juniper continued  
talking about the importance of the discovery of the library.  
She told him that it might be the most important discovery ever,  
that it might turn modern science on its ear. Logan loved Juniper  
like a sister, but at a certain point his brain just shut down.  
He did the same thing when Charlie Xavier or Hank McCoy got their  
panties in a bunch about this or that. Go on auto pilot and nod  
in the right places. Logan was a visceral man. He wanted to smell  
it, taste it or touch it. Thinking about it was almost always  
overrated.  
  
He was lost in his own thoughts when he saw the car.  
Logan frowned at the strange vehicle, both for the way it looked  
and the odd smell it was giving off. He glanced at Juniper, but she  
seemed not to pay it even peripheral attention, then he looked back  
at it. He realized that what was strange was not the smell as much  
as the complete lack of it. Normally, just about everything gave of  
a scent of one kind or another. This big, pretty beast gave up  
nothing. It was there, but it wasn't.  
  
The vehicle looked a great deal like a 1958 Plymouth Fury.  
Except that it wasn't. The fins were too big, for one thing. They  
were overextended and too tall for the chasse of the car. The front  
was wrong, too. It was boxy and streamlined instead of defined by  
the curves that made American cars in the 1950s so appealing.  
There was more, as well. A number of small inaccuracies that  
made the automobile seem like a fake. Not to speak of the fact  
that it was painted an almost atomic green. And that it was sitting  
on the edge of a desert in Alexandria, Egypt, shimmering.  
  
Logan frowned at the vehicle as they passed close by it. It  
was idling quietly, but instead of the heat Logan usually felt  
lightly on his skin when near a running car, he felt only a  
disquieting sense of cold. The windows were tinted black, and  
he couldn't see into the green monstrosity, but Logan got the  
feeling that he was being watched. He realized he was stopped,  
staring at the vehicle with something like rage when Juniper  
called to him.  
  
"Logan? You all right?" He turned to look at her, and  
forgot why he was so angry. He looked back at the car for  
only a moment before jogging to catch up with his friend.  
  
***  
  
They had to descend a number of ladders to reach their  
destination. The room was so large that their footfalls echoed  
in the growing darkness. There were only shafts of natural light in  
this cavernous room at brightest noon, not to speak of that late  
dusk when the sun finally dips below the horizon. Logan saw well  
in the dark, but even with his advanced senses, all he could make  
out were shapes and shadows. There was a monolithic column in the  
center of the room with spokes or bridges leading away from it to  
recesses high on the sandstone walls.  
  
"They called it the Library of Echoes not because of the  
sound," Juniper said. Logan turned to the sound of her voice to  
find that she was only a shadow standing by equipment on one  
edge of the cavernous room. "They gave it that name because they  
believed that what they had discovered would ripple out across the  
world and change everything it touched.  
  
"That it would ripple out across every world." Juniper  
threw a switch, and a series of massive halogen lamps sprung to  
life around the room. Logan was awestruck at the enormity of the  
space, and the complexity of the work required to put it together.  
  
The surface of the floor was covered by a writing unlike any  
hieroglyphic that he had ever seen. The strange, crosshatched  
markings were everywhere. Logan kneeled down to look at the  
intricate filigree and was astounded by the level of detail in each  
and every mark. It reminded him of Japanese calligraphy, but even  
more delicate. Juniper came to stand beside him, the pair dwarfed  
by the sheer size of the room. She pulled her long gray hair back  
into a simple ponytail and painfully kneeled beside him.  
  
"It's amazing, Juniper."  
  
"I have been over this entire space a hundred times, Logan,  
and do you know what I have found?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"I cannot find the repetition of a single character. Not even  
one."  
  
"That's impossible," Logan said, standing to look around  
the room. It was nearly the size of a football field, and the  
pictograms on the floor only took up a few inches each. There had  
to be hundreds of thousands.  
  
"Except for there." She pointed to the center of the room.  
A massive obsidian column rose from a depression, a black  
Goliath dominating the entire space. At some point in the past,  
the very top of the dark tower had been broken, and it laid off to  
one side glittering under the lights. Seven ebony spokes radiated  
off of the tower and into recesses in the wall, and at the  
termination of each of these beams there was another symbol, this  
one different stylistically than the writing on the floor. The most  
fascinating work was on the tower itself. A repetitive pattern of  
traditional hieroglyphics, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic lettering  
spiraled up the column. Logan turned to Juniper.  
  
"What does it all mean?"  
  
"I don't know yet, but I'm close. I am very . . ." She was  
cut off by chirping. They both turned to see a single cricket  
at their feet. It seemed to look up at them. It ran its  
legs together, singing a gentle song that echoed time and again in  
the empty chamber. Logan kneeled and held out his finger. The  
small creature obligingly jumped on, continuing its tune. Logan  
turned to look at Juniper in the eyes.  
  
"How do I help?" he asked.  
  
8  
  
If the first degree served principally to part the wealthy and  
bored from their money, then the second was a more martial  
initiation right. The Hellfire Club had long since learned the  
painful lesson that paid mercenaries were useless to any long term  
plan of operation. They had a tendency to value their own lives  
more than the lives they were meant to protect, an unacceptable  
quality for any organization's expendable pawns. Under Shaw's  
leadership, the Club had begun a campaign to recruit the young  
toughs of New York who fancied themselves magicians. These  
youths were taken from every tradition, youthful voodoo bocors  
from Harlem, magik boys from the Goth scene in Manhattan, even  
the skinheads out of Staten Island with their creepy white power  
rituals.  
  
Shaw saw to it that these diverse youths were given just a  
taste of real power in addition to being taught how to use a gun.  
They were mostly weak of will -- joiners typically were -- but they  
made ideal foot soldiers during those times when more physical  
interventions were required. They certainly did not run at the first  
signs of trouble like the rent-a-guns the Club had used in the  
eighties. The second degree was as high as any of these kids had  
ever made it. High enough that they could be bonded to the order  
for all time through the use of ancient ritual, but low enough on  
the totem pole that they could never make decisions. Best of all,  
the kids felt a debt of gratitude to Shaw as an individual, and acted  
as a sort of Pretorian guard whenever the need arose.  
  
The ritual itself was simple and standard. It consisted of  
imagery from the Western Magickal Tradition of Crowley coupled  
with some American Indian elements of Shaw's own selection. In  
theory, it would endow whoever successfully completed it  
with an aura of invincibility so complete and awe-inspiring that  
nobody would dare to raise a hand against the initiated. Of course,  
Shaw and his Queens knew that this was testosterone appealing  
poppycock no more powerful than the Lord's Prayer prior to the  
big game, but it had its uses. The Initiate was likewise aware of  
the intricate fallacies in which he was preparing to participate.  
  
Over many long years, he had defeated a great number of  
the Club's muscle. Whatever power might be gained through the  
ritual of the second degree was no match for skill, wit and a  
powerful mutant ability. Nonetheless, it pleased to Initiate to be  
taking the degree because he knew better than most that ends  
almost always justified means. He allowed the Queens to inflict  
their little tortures; indeed, the Initiate might have obtained some  
pleasure from them. He bowed when appropriate, and spoke the  
right words, but through it all, his mind was elsewhere. The  
Initiate thought mostly of the whispers in the darkness he had  
heard, and how events were already hurtling forward at an  
unlimited clip. When he rose before the Inner Circle, sweaty  
and out of breath, his smile was broad and genuine. Things were  
already beginning to move on, and he was at the center of it all.  
  
  
To Be Continued  
  
  
NEXT: Events begin to converge as Logan mines the library's  
secrets, Kitty has lunch with a familiar redhead and Xavier  
receives a most peculiar warning. Come back again for . . .  
  
Half Lit World  
  
Chapter II: The Broken Surface   
  



	3. The Broken Surface

Synopsis: Events begin to converge as Logan mines the library's  
secrets, Kitty has lunch with a familiar redhead and Xavier  
receives an ominous warning.   
  
Disclaimer: DC Comics, Marvel Comics and Stephen King own  
and control many of the characters and situations below -- they  
are used here solely for good clean fun. Due to violence,  
language and mature themes, the project should be considered   
PG-13. Feedback is my heroin, so drop me a line at   
Xanderdg@hotmail.com and tell me what you think. Many thanks  
to Penny Sue and Alex SisterWolf for editorial assistance.  
  
The previous chapters are collected at the Fonts of Wisdom  
(http://home.att.net/~lubakmetyk/), in the Prince of   
Dreams archive (http://www.angelfire.com/mn2/AlexSisterWolf/)  
and right here in the X-Men section of fanfiction.net.   
___________________________________________________________________  
  
X-Men: Half Lit World  
  
by  
  
Alexander Greenfield  
  
Chapter II: The Broken Surface  
  
1  
  
He was not a dexterous boy even under the best  
circumstances. At the tail end of a growth spurt that had taken  
him to the towering height of five-foot-seven, Kenny Thompson  
sometimes found it difficult to walk up stairs without tripping.  
His knees and elbows were constantly scraped up, and his mother  
covered the wounds in a thick goo of neosporin that caused his  
clothes to adhere awkwardly to his skin. If he didn't know any  
better, Kenny might think that his mother and father quietly  
assisted in making him the laughingstock of Weschester High --  
that they secretly enjoyed his social ostracization. Kenny   
grimaced and continued his sewing. The outfit would soon be  
done, and then we would see just who was dependent on whom.   
  
Kenny's finger was cut by the sewing needle, but in truth,  
he didn't mind the pain. He'd read about so-called "secret  
cutting," about how some kids his age would carve on themselves  
in order to feel something, to feel anything, but Kenny didn't  
need that. He felt everything, constantly. More and more, his  
emotions seemed to dominate every facet of his daily experience.  
Weeks ago, just after the incident with Bruce Moyers in the hall,  
he was sitting in the living room watching "Dawson's Creek" when  
something on the show brought him to tears. His parents were  
sitting as they always did, together but apart, one reading the  
paper, the other's nose deep in a book when tears began flowing  
out of their son's unnoticed eyes. They came harder and harder  
as Joey and Dawson broke up or got back together, and it was all  
Kenny could do to keep from bawling like a baby.  
  
His parents only noticed when the power began to flicker.   
The lights dimmed imperceptibly, and Kenny stood and departed  
as quietly as he could. By the time he got to the hall, he was  
crying desperately over the travail of the kids in Capeside, and  
he heard a loud clank as the power in the house cut out. His   
father cursed, and Kenny felt a surge of anger that the old man  
cared more about his reading lamp than having a conversation with   
his son. Then there was another, louder noise in the living room   
and the lights in the house began to strobe in syncopated rhythm   
with the boy's pulse. Something popped deep in the walls, and   
glass broke violently. His mother screamed, and his father began  
a low moaning that didn't stop until they arrived at the Salem   
Center Presbyterian twenty minutes later. Kenny tried to hide  
in the bathroom, to get away, to control himself, but his mother  
charged in behind him. She grabbed a raft of towels from under   
the sink and turned to look down at him. Kenny curled beside  
the toilet.   
  
"Get a hold of yourself. Your father's just had a little  
accident and we have to get him to the hospital." Her face was  
strange and ethereal in the flickering light. "Somebody's going   
to be sued over this."  
  
What frightened Kenny the most was not the blood  
speckling his mother's shirt, nor the way she pulled towels  
from the cupboard -- how many could she possibly need? What  
scared the shivering boy the most was her coldly rational tone.   
She acted as though she could apply some ointment to her  
husband's wounds, give a perfunctory kiss and everything would  
be fine. She finally got all of the towels together, and  
she told Kenny to help carry them. When he got to the living  
room, he saw why they needed so many.  
  
Mother kept him home from school while father was in the  
ICU. The light had exploded with such force and heat that the  
glass was molten by the time it hit his face only feet away.   
Kenny felt guilty that instead of any true concern for his old  
man all he really hoped was that upon his return to Weschester he  
would be given a free pass for at least a few weeks -- that the  
taunts and the teasing would lessen out of respect for the   
ordeal the boy had gotten through. Of course, nothing turned  
out as he hoped.  
  
The story of the accident had already festered and evolved  
among the students. Kenny supposed that his mother must have  
told Margaret Lancaster, who told Sara Moyers, and so on. The  
beating Bruce and his buddies dished out was bad, equal parts  
vengeance for the hallway incident and mindless sport. They did  
not wait around a dark corner for the small boy. They beat  
the hell out of him right in the cafeteria while the other kids  
watched. Nobody tried to intervene, and Kenny even noticed  
members of the faculty slink away, attempting to avoid notice.   
They beat him from one end of the dining hall to the other, and  
when Kenny finally crawled out the rear door, he heard someone  
use the word for the first time.  
  
"Fuck off and die, mutie!"  
  
He did not. A week after the beating, he returned to  
school. He kept his head down, did his homework, and did not  
respond to any taunting. Kenny's own family regarded him with  
suspicion, as though he were tainted by an indefinable scent. It  
was only a short time before Kenny began his sewing project. The  
die had been cast.  
  
The boy looked at the cut on his finger and sighed. Now, at  
the conclusion of the project, his fingers were covered in a  
latticework of white scars. Kenny was not a stupid boy. He  
skipped two grades over the years, and never saw anything other  
than the letter "A" on his report cards. He knew full well what  
was happening to him. The Dateline NBC special filled in the  
blanks -- powers begin manifesting during puberty; there is  
generally antisocial behavior; etcetera, etcetera; blah, blah.   
The kids in school, his parents, everyone smelled it on him like  
dogs in a pack. Kenny was different. Kenny was a mutant.  
  
The bulb of the lamp on his desk was removed, and Kenny  
held his bleeding index finger underneath the open socket. With a  
smell of ozone and a flash of bluish light, a thin crackle of  
current cauterized the laceration. Kenny went back to his sewing.   
This was the last piece, and the timing couldn't be more perfect.   
His father and mother would be sitting down at the breakfast table,  
talking in the hushed tones they were using more and more often.   
Kenny would finish his little bit of home economics homework  
here, then he would try it on. He would go downstairs and give  
mom and dad a piece of his mind about the way they had been  
acting of late. He would remind them that parents had a  
responsibility, no matter what Stone Philips said about the menace  
in America's homes. He would make absolutely clear that they  
would live up to their parental obligations from now on or there  
would be hell to pay.  
  
Then Kenny Thompson would go and meet the school bus.   
Today, he had no intention of bringing his books.  
  
2  
  
Once one got down as far as the eight hundred block,  
Graymalkin Lane became the land of the upwardly mobile. Gone  
were the palatial estates. They were replaced by the peculiar and  
random architecture of suburban New York. Colonials rested next  
to Tudors which were adjacent to the odd Adobe. Junior execs  
from the city bought these homes as an investment while they  
climbed the corporate ladder. Turnover in the neighborhood was  
high, and even today there were no less than two moving vans on  
the street.  
  
"Beamers and Volvos and Saabs, oh my," Kitty muttered.   
She walked quickly down the road under the gray sky. Though it  
was late this year, she could finally taste winter in the chilly air.   
She pulled her parka close around her and smiled despite herself.   
There was something delicious in a secret. Everyone was so close  
to each other at Xavier's that Kitty often had the strange sensation  
of losing herself in the crowd. She supposed that this was at least  
partly the byproduct of living among the most concentrated group  
of telepaths in the world. Though it was a bit more than two miles  
into Salem Center proper, she hadn't asked for a car, preferring  
instead to walk -- and to avoid any questions that her trip might  
raise.   
  
It's not that she would lie if any of her fellow X-Men asked  
what she was doing, but she held no great desire to deal with the  
question. Super hero groups other than the Fantastic Four or the  
Avengers *had* to work in secret because their very existence  
tended to violate dozens of laws. Sure, the Republicans wanted  
you to keep and bear the biggest arms you could, but God forbid  
you were born with an ability that set you apart and you wanted to  
hang around with your peers. Subversive mutant militias, indeed.   
Still, reality was what it was, and telling Ororo or Jean that she  
planned to sit with a stranger and tell her life story would be met  
with thorny silence at best. Of anyone, only Scott might  
understand the desire for a connection beyond the claustrophobic  
mansion, but even he would tell her that some reporter was not the  
most pragmatic choice for a confidant. It had been awkward  
enough when the young writer returned her call.  
  
She had been standing in the shower following a  
particularly strenuous training session in the Danger Room.   
Professor X had recently become obsessed with team building  
exercises, and Kitty found them exhausting both physically and  
emotionally. There were too many lone wolfs in this incarnation  
of the X-Men, too much history between the members. It seemed  
to Kitty that they would never find any cohesion, but that is what  
people always said about new groupings. Xavier had always made  
them work before when push came to shove before. Still, Kitty  
was weary. She hung her head low and let the scalding water  
cascade over her.  
  
"Phone call, Kitty," said an English accent inside her  
Midwestern mind. Kitty jumped. Even after all these years,  
someone else's thoughts flitting through her consciousness gave  
her the heebie-geebies. It wasn't as though it were even a voice to  
hear. Instead, it was a combination of spoken language colored by  
the mental equivalent of Elizabeth Braddock's elegant speaking  
voice, and misty shadow images no more substantial than the  
steam from the shower. Kitty caught hints of the way the phone  
felt in Betsy's hand, the way the hardwood smelled in the front  
room. She received unfamiliar intonations of the caller's voice  
asking for her, and even more opaque echoes of the everyday  
things on Betsy's mind -- laundry day, ate too much, gotta work  
out.   
  
"Who is it?" Kitty asked aloud, finding it easier than trying  
to project her thoughts. Everything was twisted in telepathic  
communication. She was vaguely aware of the way Betsy's throat  
felt when she asked the caller's identity, but she couldn't hear the  
words. It occurred to her to wonder if Betsy also had a peripheral  
awareness of her own physicality; could she feel the water running  
down Kitty's face?  
  
"It's a woman," came the response. "Her name is Rose  
Walker. She's returning your call."  
  
"Tell her just a sec," Kitty thought. She smiled broadly  
and turned off the water, reaching to retrieve her towel. For only a  
fraction of a second, she could feel Betsy's curiosity before the  
older woman left her mind. Kitty dried off and took the call in the  
small locker area off the showers.  
  
The conversation itself was brief but easy. Kitty and Rose  
struck an immediate and light rapport, both of them peppering  
their repartee with sarcastic asides and ironic patter. They quickly  
set a lunch for later in the week. Kitty began dressing and thought  
about how long it had been since she just sat and talked with a  
regular person -- with someone who did not don costume and try to  
save the world every third day.   
  
Almost in response to this last thought, Betsy came in  
wearing her full regalia. She was a beautiful, exotic woman with  
flowing purple hair and a tattooed face. Her costume left little to  
the imagination, but few hero chicks' did these days for reasons  
that Kitty could not fully explain. As Psylocke, Betsy was both  
telepathic and an assassin of some considerable cunning. Kitty  
had skills of her own in that regard, and in their respective  
personas the women had tangled a time or two. Despite this, they  
generally shared a respectful congeniality between them, the  
byproduct of being outsiders even amongst outsiders.   
  
The women nodded hello, and Psylocke went over to the  
mats and began stretching out as Kitty finished dressing. She  
tossed her towel into the overflowing linen basket. A sign hung  
over it indicating who was on laundry rotation. Kitty read the  
legend and groaned to herself.  
  
"Gambit?" Betsy asked.  
  
"Of course. 'Ain't a man's place ta be t'inking 'bout  
washin' da cloves.'"  
  
Psylocke laughed softly. "So . . . who was that, then?"  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"On the phone," she continued. Kitty arched her eyebrows,  
and Betsy held up her hands in a non-confrontational gesture.   
"Don't mean to be nosy. It's just that you got so excited when you  
heard who it was."  
  
"No big deal," she replied a bit too quickly. "Just a friend  
from outside." Kitty left the room with Psylocke looking after her.  
  
Graymalkin finally ran into Canal Street, and Kitty turned  
toward town. She could see her breath in the frosty air, and the  
sun seemed distant through naked trees. Early winter was one of  
her favorite times of the year -- it was quiet even in superhero  
circles. Kitty supposed that villains took vacations for Christmas,  
Hanukkah or Kwanza just like everybody else. She giggled at her  
image of Doctor Doom on vacation in Orlando wearing a pair of  
Mickey's ears for a moment before she caught sight of a bright  
yellow sign.   
  
There were always lost pet notices on phone poles along  
the sidewalk. "We Miss Charlie Very Much!" one declared above  
a picture of a large and friendly looking orange cat. "Please Help  
Us Find Him!" No matter how hard-hearted she thought she had  
become, these always got to Kitty. They jolted her back to her  
childhood outside of Chicago. Her father always took it as a  
matter of pride that the family dog, Bogie never needed to wear a  
leash. Despite Kitty and her mother constantly begging him to put  
a collar on the big mutt, Mister Pryde was as good as his name.   
  
One afternoon on a walk the inevitable happened. Another  
dog whose arrogant owner thought of leashes as a weakness ran for  
Bogie and the two animals tore each other apart. Her father stood  
screaming futility, and in the years since Kitty realized that it was  
the first time she saw her dad as fallible. That it was the first  
time she felt contempt for him was something she still had not  
completely admitted. All of the good training in the world did not  
stop Bogie from limping away into the woods. Even at seven years  
old Kitty knew that her best friend had gone away to die, but she  
still helped her mother put signs up all over the neighborhood  
begging for somebody, anybody to help find their pet. The Pryde  
household never had another animal.  
  
The sign that caught Kitty's attention now was the brightest  
fluorescent yellow she had ever seen. It was just shy of painful to  
look at, the glare made the words difficult to read. Indeed, there  
was a moment of disconnection before she realized that the letters  
(*symbols*) were upside down.   
  
Kitty shook her head, trying to clear it. There was nothing  
suspicious about the colorful poster. She tilted her head to read  
the inverted lettering:  
  
CARNEY IS MISSING. HE'S A HECKUVA DOG LIKE YOUR  
KIND WON'T FIND AGAIN. CARNEY'S A GEM. IF YOU  
SEE OUR RED DOG CARNEY DO CALL US HEAR?  
  
There was a number below (above) the upside-down lettering.   
Kitty stood looking at the announcement, captivated, but unsure  
why. There was something to it, something unusual, but the  
reasons why were just beyond her grasp. At last, she decided to  
right the poster so that everyone could help to find that gem of a  
dog, Carney.  
  
She reached up to pull the paper off the pole and turn it  
around, and the moment her fingers touched the leaflet, she felt  
jarred, like there was an earthquake, a small one, perceptible only  
to pets. Her eyes were not deceiving her. Kitty Pryde, mutant and  
member of the X-Men was standing on a cold December day  
pulling a yellow sheet of paper off a telephone pole. Yet her  
fingers were telling her something entirely different. She was not  
touching paper, she was touching something oily and old and  
scented with damnation and wrongness. Kitty was nauseous and  
the world wrinkled like paper around her while she touched the  
rubbery yellow thing that was paper but not paper and Kitty  
wanted to use her power to phase to escape to be free of this thing  
this gate and the low men but the festering thing was a doorway  
you didn't want to go through and you ought to beware to beware  
to find the breaker you are the breaker Kitty the breaker to end all  
  
"Are you all right, young lady?"  
  
Kitty turned to look at an elderly woman in brightly  
colored sweat pants. She had broken away from two friends  
standing several feet away on the sidewalk, and she looked at the  
young woman with deep concern. Kitty blinked and looked back at  
the phone pole. She was holding the yellow paper, but it wasn't  
any brighter than the typical legal pad. Truthfully, when she  
looked around the neighborhood, the posters were everywhere.   
Somebody just wanted their dog back. She let the poster go and  
took a deep breath.  
  
"Are you all right?" The old woman looked back at her  
friends for a moment, then up at Kitty.  
  
"Yes, ma'am. I'm fine. I'm okay." It sounded as though  
she were convincing herself. The old woman smiled convivially.  
  
"Good, good. You looked as though you were on a bit of a  
vacation, my duck."  
  
"I guess I'm back. Do you know the time?" The woman  
looked at her watch and told Kitty, and the young woman was  
stunned. She had left early, planning to do some shopping before  
her lunch, now she had less than fifteen minutes left. She thanked  
the woman and ran the rest of the way into Salem Center.   
  
As she moved, she felt the first wet flakes of snow against  
her face, and she smiled, quickly forgetting the experience at the  
telephone pole. Besides, she was right, there were plenty of the  
yellow signs all over the place now. Kitty never wondered why  
they were all upside down.  
  
3  
  
The Initiate's lungs felt as though they were going to  
explode. He scraped and clawed at the earth, using all of his  
strength to climb upwards. He hadn't taken a breath in what felt  
like an eternity, but his conditioning was the equal of any Olympic  
athlete. He knew that he had easily another minute-and-a-half  
before he was even in the territory of his own personal best.   
Nonetheless, he dug through the earth at a pace that would have  
been an expression of terror in another man. It pleased the Initiate  
that he could hear panic deep in his own consciousness, back in  
the lizard brain, but he had beaten it down. Discipline could do  
that. Discipline and whispered promises in the dark.  
  
Of course he knew what the third initiation of the Hellfire  
Club was supposed to do for those who survived its petty rigors.   
Lifting the veil of modern life was a noble enough endeavor, but  
the Initiate knew far more than anything digging free from a hole  
in the ground could teach. The third degree was only another  
signpost on his broader quest. A small enemy to be defeated and  
learned from. The Initiate kept his wits about him and dug his way  
upwards, preparing to be reborn into blackest Hellfire.  
  
There was a story that when Buddha was born, he stood  
and looked around the grim delivery room. He smiled a wide and  
toothless baby's grin and announced to all who had gathered that  
this was the life and world in which he would become enlightened.   
The Initiate knew nothing about enlightenment, but he did  
comprehend something of purpose. The soothing voice he listened  
to in the quiet darkness of his dreams told him things about the  
world he would soon be born into. It told him that there were  
words that must be spoken. The Initiate continued to dig upwards,  
bourne on by the strength of a zealot.  
  
It was cold in the Adirondacks at this time of year, and the  
Inner Circle stood close together, watching the pit. It had been  
used for this ritual since the Club first arrived in America in the  
eighteenth century, but it was never meant to be utilized with the  
temperature below freezing. Like any other material, dirt becomes  
less malleable when frozen, and that could mean death to someone  
attempting to dig through it. Sebastian Shaw nodded to himself  
and drew the Black Queen closer, sharing her warmth. The third  
degree was meant to test the mettle of those who attempted it, and  
those who could not be reborn were doomed to one darkness or  
another anyway. The Initiate showed courage when he insisted on  
taking the test as soon as it was offered to him; now it was time to  
see his determination bear fruit.  
  
The frigid wind brought the scent of pine and soft maple  
with it. Regardless of the outcome of the initiation, Shaw intended  
to cut down a Christmas tree with his own two hands. The Black  
Queen made endless fun of him for his insistence upon blanketing  
the Club with the trappings of the season. He always responded  
with the excuse that enough of the heavily contributing members  
liked the decor that it was worth the organization's while to give  
the people what they wanted. The truth of his reasoning was quite  
different, though. Long after the red-haired beauty had drifted off  
to sleep, Shaw would quietly admit to himself that he missed the  
innocence that Christmas brought with it.  
  
Innocence and belief. These were the very qualities that  
the initiations of the Hellfire Club were meant to expose and  
expel. As he watched the deep pit filled with black earth imported  
from Malta, Shaw realized that the Initiate was giving up a great  
deal for the Club. In some ways the rebirth his former enemy was  
going through was more profound than his own had been. When  
the time was right, the two might be brothers born of shared  
crushing experience.  
  
At last, the dirt pit moved, a subtle undulation blooming  
from underneath. The Bishops sighed audibly in relief, and Shaw  
even felt Madelyne relax a bit under his arm. The Black King  
continued to look on with his studied countenance of indifference,  
appearing to be no more involved with this initiation than he was  
in a conversation with the architects and contractors building the  
Club's new home, or perhaps a game of bridge. Inside, he was  
elated if not entirely surprised by the success of the Initiate.   
  
The pit rippled again, and a hand thrust up from the bitter  
ground. A memory flitted across Shaw's mind. He was young, not  
yet even a teenager when he and Roger Wilkins snuck into the  
back of the Rialto in South Philly back in Sixty-Eight. All the  
older kids had been talking about the picture for weeks, but  
Sebastian and Roger could not find a way in to save their lives.   
Finally they got in the back, and Shaw could see that it had been  
worth the wait. In the decades since, the Black King had built and  
lost several empires. He had seen things that would drive weaker  
souls completely insane and shrugged them off like nothing. In all  
that time, almost forty years now, there was still little that scared  
him more than seeing "Night of the Living Dead" that first time.  
  
Another arm burst forth, followed by the Initiate's torso.   
The Knights surged forward to perform their appointed task, but  
the shivering man waived them away. He stood naked in the  
freezing night and strode to stand before Shaw and the Queens.  
  
"You have died and been buried twelve feet and six below  
the sacred earth of womb and heart. Now you stand reborn," said  
the Black King of the Hellfire Club. "What say you?"  
  
The Initiate stepped back and slowly looked at each  
member of the Inner Circle in turn. Finally, his eyes settled on his  
master and sponsor, Shaw. He smiled, caught up in events that  
were inexorably in motion.  
  
"I am Osiris, slain and risen," the Initiate said. "My time  
has come at last."  
  
4  
  
The flare sparked to life, bathing the alcove in a pale,  
incendiary glow. Over the centuries, millennia really, the sandstone  
darkened and hard desert sand scoured pits into the rock even this  
far beneath the ground. Despite the excoriation of age, though, the  
seemingly delicate carving still stood out in sharp contrast with the  
obsidian rear wall. There were even flakes of the silver used to  
paint the carving in, though most of this had been lost to either time  
or grave robbers. The ceaseless sounds of digging were distant in  
the recess even though it was only set a few feet into the wall. In  
addition to being wonderful craftsmen, the mathematicians who  
built the library three thousand years before apparently knew a  
thing or two about acoustics. Logan frowned.   
  
"I don't know, Junie!" he shouted to his compatriot forty  
feet below in the main gallery. "It's just like the others. Not a  
'glyph or anything else I've ever seen!" Indeed, the carving before  
him resembled nothing more than a gas mask. That was  
impossible, of course -- there had been nothing of the kind in the  
time of the pyramids.   
  
Logan turned around and stepped onto the thick ebony beam  
leading from the hollow to the gigantic dark tower dominating the  
center of the room. The gargantuan space was alive below him as  
diggers, students and contractors all worked under Juniper  
Faraway's direction. The construction workers were building tall  
wooden scaffolds abreast of each of the alcoves and the dark  
column itself, reinforcing the decaying structures. Up to now, only  
Logan himself had been able to amaze the others and climb up to  
examine the intricacies above the center of the room. From there  
he acted as Dr. Faraway's eyes, giving her every detail of the  
ancient masterpiece that was the Library of Echoes. It had been  
from the crow's nest of the tower itself that he had been able to  
make the first breakthrough.  
  
Even now the teams of grad students were systematically  
moving across the floor with trace paper and charcoal pencils. The  
flat surface of the room was completely covered by unusual  
crosshatched pictograms of a kind neither Logan nor Faraway had  
ever encountered in their travels. The kids from universities all  
over Europe were spending their study abroad dollars for the great  
experience of spending day after day on their hands and knees  
laboriously taking impressions from each individual symbol and  
noting its location by a point on a grid of the room. Then they filed  
it to be scanned by other students into a database on the ancient  
laptop that the University of Ontario had been coaxed into giving  
Faraway for the dig. With twelve graduate archaeologists at their  
disposal, they were nearing completion. A mathematical analysis of  
the grid of the room indicated that there were just shy of one  
million individual characters on the floor of the Library, and none  
were ever repeated. Still, the final answer appeared to be right  
around the bend.  
  
Juniper stood by the computer gesticulating madly at the  
poor student who had the misfortune to admit more than a passing  
familiarity with information technology. Even above din and  
distance, Logan's attenuated senses could hear her bitterly  
complaining about the speed of the device. She demanded that the  
student figure out a way to make it work faster. Now that progress  
was being made, she was a shark to blood in the water.  
  
He knew that Juniper was mildly annoyed that after almost  
three years work, Logan had been the first one to begin an  
understanding of the unique language. He had climbed the central  
column to get a better view of the room as a whole. Time in  
intelligence circles taught him that when it seemed that no further  
information could be gathered from a scene, one only needed to  
approach the problem from a different angle. Cliches were usually  
cliches for a reason. It only took seconds of looking down at the  
mosaic below to realize that the characters *were* related to one  
another. Rather than what appeared on the ground to be thousands  
of individual markings, there were actually only a few dozen base  
symbols. These all had additional swirls and lines added, but the  
language, whatever it was, had very clear root ideograms.  
  
Juniper practically danced a jig at the discovery. Logan was  
mainly pleased that she had given up on asking how it was possible  
that he had noticed anything about the small writing on the floor  
from nearly forty feet above. She would only accept his cavalier  
response about "eatin' lot of carrots" for so long. She immediately  
set the students to work mapping out the room. Even with the work  
uncompleted, the computer identified distinct patterns in the  
organization of the language on the floor. When each of the root  
characters was assigned a color, what appeared to be a chaotic  
hodge-podge of chicken scratches actually took on an astounding  
order. Indeed, over yet another bottle of absinth, Juniper told  
Logan that she thought that the entire room might actually impart a  
single pictogram -- a divine letter, equal parts Pi and cipher.  
  
"Perhaps it is the Alpha, Logan," she had said. "Or the  
Omega. Maybe we have stumbled upon the word for the universe.   
The very sound that God intoned to bring us all into being."  
  
"You're talkin' crazy, darlin'. 'Sides, even if you were  
right, what kinda fool would say it." They sat in her room for a  
long time after that, listening to the quiet dark of the city. A single   
cricket sang on some distant rooftop, and in the end, Juniper had no   
response.  
  
If she was excited by the prospect of a pattern in the  
lightless chaos of her career-topping find, then she was perplexed  
by the next wonder that Logan discovered. Only moments after  
recognizing the language implicit in the markings on the floor, he  
noticed an anomaly on the tower he stood on.  
  
It was made of black obsidian, as were the thick spokes that  
ran from it to the recesses in the wall. Thick as a redwood, the  
apex of the column, a pyramidal structure, had been severed at  
some distant time in the past and lay in pieces on the floor. Juniper  
and Logan studied the broken portion carefully, but it made no  
sense. It seemed as though the onyx had exploded from within.  
  
Standing atop the broken tower, Logan kneeled down to run  
his hands along the aberration. Inside the column itself were five  
cylindrical cores of what appeared to be black quartz. They were  
virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the broken and craggy  
rock except for slight variation in pattern. Logan reached down to  
examine them when he felt something. It was distant, and very  
deep, like some ancient pneumatic machine. He looked down to  
see if anyone else reacted to the deep sound, but everyone on the  
floor went about their business oblivious to the low rumble he  
detected in the base of his spine. At last, Logan felt the quartz, and   
it was slightly warm to the touch. They ran down the tower in all  
four corners and at the center, like the whole room in miniature.  
  
When he told Juniper, she couldn't come up with any real  
reason for the peculiar design. It was not something she had ever  
heard of, but that did not make it impossible. "Remember, though,  
that this room was meant to be active. It was not a library built for  
quiet contemplation. Perhaps the column was some pseudo-  
scientific tool used for magic." She said the last word with a  
giggle, amused by the very idea, but Logan was less so. He  
couldn't tell her about the rumbling or the warmth. These were  
both well out of the realm of her perception.  
  
"Did you hear me, Doc?" he shouted. Juniper continued to  
holler at the poor computer operator, so Logan leapt from the tower  
to the half-completed scaffold and scampered the rest of the way  
down. Several of the students watched his dexterous flight and  
applauded when he hit the ground. Logan grinned, tipping his hat,  
then headed over to Juniper.  
  
"Is there no way that this idiotic machine can be made to  
work faster? We are too close to wait any more." Logan looked  
around at the screen as she pleaded with the boy and saw that the  
modeling of the room was almost completed. Whatever the  
ultimate pattern was would soon be apparent.  
  
"I'm sorry doctor, but it just can't go any faster. It's an old  
computer."  
  
"Young man that simply is not good enough! I will not be  
held hostage here by . . ." Logan interceded, saving the boy from  
any further wrath. He gently put his arm around his friend and  
began leading her away.  
  
"You hear me, Junie? I got a look at that last recess on the  
wall." As they moved back toward the tower, Logan looked back  
and winked at the relieved grad student. "Same as the others - no  
relationship to any of the other writin'."  
  
"Oh, Logan, we are so close. At any moment, the final  
letter could be revealed and that damned machine is the only thing  
that . . ."  
  
"Come on, Juniper. These kids are working as fast as they  
can. Take a break. Let me tell you about the alcoves."  
  
"You've already told me everything, old friend. Seven  
columns stem from the tower, leading to seven arbors in the wall.   
In each hollow there is a symbol - a butterfly, a circle with a hook, a   
papyrus scroll, an, uhm . . ." She turned her hand in the air,  
conducting an invisible orchestra. Logan struck up the band.  
  
"A spear and a heart, and I just found what looks like some  
kinda mask in the last one. The only familiar symbol . . ."  
  
"Is the ankh, yes. Clearly these are altars of some kind.   
Worship of the seven heavens or some such nonsense. The keys are  
the etchings below our feet, old friend. We are on the precipice of  
a momentous discovery, and the Goddamned computer is right in  
our way!"  
  
"Look, Junie, I'm no archaeologist, but I do have ta  
wonder."  
  
"To wonder what?"  
  
"Why the hell would somebody build an altar fifty feet  
above the ground with no access?" They were standing at the foot  
of the tower. Juniper looked up, studying the beams running from  
the tower to the broken sandstone hollows.  
  
"We'll take our mysteries one at a time, Logan."  
  
"Fair enough. Let's grab some lunch."  
  
***  
  
Logan could not convince Juniper to leave the dig when the  
answer to the riddle could appear at any moment. However, she did  
ask him to grab humus and falafel from the market, bread from the  
bakery. Archaeology was obsessive work; one tended to forget  
everything outside of the march toward discovery. For his part  
though, Logan was no professional digger, and the smells of  
Alexandria rarely allowed him to forget about his rumbling  
stomach, so he acted as an alarm clock for the others.   
  
Mid-day was the best to be out walking. It was hot enough  
that the majority of the people retreated to the interiors of their  
homes, but still alive enough that Logan felt the electric pulse of the   
city. It reminded him of Manhattan on Sundays. There were times  
that he missed the camaraderie of Graymalkin back in the States,  
but life was exhausting there. It was more than simply the  
superheroing -- Logan was a man of action, and he still got a thrill  
out of a good scrap -- it was the constant emotional drain of the  
place. You couldn't put that many single men and women together  
in a home without making a recipe for trouble. Of course, in  
Logan's case, it was not a *single* woman who caused him all the  
trouble. It was a married one. Worse than feeling things was the  
constant pressure to *talk* about them. He strongly suspected that  
the phrase most often uttered in the Graymalkin house was "are you  
all right?"  
  
It couldn't be more different staying with Juniper. She  
spoke about work, or she did not speak at all. Logan respected that,  
but it did make for some awkward moments. Since arriving in  
Alexandria, Logan noticed more and more of the peculiar yellow  
fliers attached to walls and telephone poles around the city. They  
seemed concentrated around the dig site, and to Logan's untrained  
eye, they all appeared to be upside down. His curiosity finally got  
the better of him, and several days earlier he had asked Juniper  
what they meant.  
  
  
"I'm sorry?" She had looked at him curiously. Logan  
pointed across the street from where they were sitting in the early  
evening. Three of the leaflets were stapled to a stunted palm tree,  
its browning leaves close to death. They rustled in the gentle  
breeze, waving like little yellow flags.  
  
"Those handbills. Seen'em everywhere." Juniper looked  
over and a strange look crossed her face. To Logan, it appeared  
that she disconnected for a moment. She was clearly looking at the  
waving papers, but her eyes seemed far away at the same time.   
"Juniper?"  
  
"Hm? Oh, I hadn't noticed them before." Before he could  
follow up she stood up and moved away at a brisk pace. Logan  
dropped it and let the issue lay. If Juniper didn't care, why should  
he? He hadn't thought about the ubiquitous leaflets since.  
  
As he got closer to the market, Logan inhaled deeply,  
eagerly anticipating the menagerie of meal time smells that every  
breath provided him. Instead, he read something that nearly made  
him gag. With his advanced senses, Logan had always been keenly  
aware of his environment, and he had a great facility for  
remembering the specificity of sensations he encountered. What he  
smelled now was unlike anything he had ever experienced.  
  
It was something like the sour, sweaty smell in the caverns  
of the Morlocks beneath New York, and a bit like the grease cheese  
would leave on your hands if you cooked with it. It was worse than  
either of those, though. Coppery, like blood, only with sugary,  
saccharine undertones. It was a smell very like gangrene, and it  
was coming closer.   
  
Despite his incredible hearing, Logan didn't hear the  
screaming engine until it was almost too late. He had turned  
around, facing back toward the dig site in trying to find the source  
of the cloying smell. A horn as loud as a fire engine or a semi's  
blasted out at him, and adrenaline spilled into Logan's stomach. He  
jumped to the left just in time for a shimmering orange beast of a  
car to roar by him, speeding toward the ruins outside of town. It  
reminded him of the one he had seen weeks before. On first glance,  
it appeared to be a gas guzzling piece of 1956 Detroit iron. Even  
through the dust trail it left in its wake, though, Logan could see  
that it wasn't quite right. Close, but no cigar, he thought. It was as   
though a counterfeiter of intermediate skill had made the machine:  
it was almost a classic Chevy, but the details were all wrong.  
  
KACHUNK!  
  
Logan looked over from where he was sitting on the side of  
the road. The noxious smell had mostly left with the car, but traces  
of it still wafted about, largely centered around the man in the  
yellow coat.  
  
Around Christmas, most of the white faces left Alexandria.   
If one was going on vacation in the Middle East at this time of year,  
one generally went to Israel or Cairo, not a backwater with  
delusions of grandeur. For the month of December, Logan had  
noticed every Caucasian face he had passed sticking out like a soar  
thumb. He had never seen this man before, though, and he was glad  
of it. Logan's lip rose in an involuntary snarl.  
  
KACHUNK! The man in the coat slammed another staple  
into one of the yellow fliers, attaching it to a withered palm. He  
was very tall, maybe six-six, and looked to be very thin. He wore a  
Stetson and cowboy boots with shiny spurs that seemed to twirl of  
their own accord. The duster he wore could have come off a  
plainsman in the 1870s except for one very substantial detail: it was  
primary yellow. As yellow as the leaflet he stapled into the pole.   
Logan stared unabashedly at the man, the grimace frozen on his  
mouth.  
  
The man tilted his head slightly, then turned around to face  
Logan. The noon sun came straight down from above casting a  
shadow from the man's hat and covering his eyes. He stood there,  
his hands loosely at his side. Logan stood up, and they regarded  
one another from across the street. Logan thought of the old Clint  
Eastwood movies he and Scott liked to watch whenever the truce  
was on, and he wished he had a six-shooter before remembering  
that he knew a trick or two that could silence any clown with a gun.   
The guy across the street did not wear greasepaint.  
  
He smiled at Logan. His lips kept stretching; they stretched  
beyond the place where even a person with a wide smile would  
stop. He smiled, and Logan thought he could see the man's molars.   
It seemed that there were dozens of teeth, rows of them, a shark on  
two legs. Each and every one of them was silver, catching the light,  
playing it like a mean cat with a tender mouse. Though he wasn't a  
man given to fear, Logan found the smile unnerving. Then, without  
a word, the man in the long yellow coat tipped his hat and turned to  
walk down the street. Logan caught sight of the man's eyes. They  
were too close together, small and mean beneath a thick, sloping  
forehead.   
  
Logan watched the man depart with his hands rolled into  
fists so tight that his fingernails cut his palms. He stayed that way  
even after the man disappeared around a corner. "Regulator,"  
Logan muttered, without knowing exactly what the word meant. He  
thought it was something from the Old West. "That was a by God  
Regulator."  
  
5  
  
Even with skills honed by years of supersonic piloting  
experience, Scott Summers could not defeat the New York  
Throughway. He saw a small opening and hurtled the SUV in front  
of a tractor-trailer with inches to spare. The driver of the semi laid   
on his horn, and Scott clenched his jaw. Though he was normally a   
patient man with a calm and measured demeanor, he was rapidly  
gaining an appreciation for road rage. He looked over at his wife,  
who sat in the passenger seat engrossed by some story in "The  
Atlantic" -- it seemed that she was completely unfazed by either the  
noise or the noxious exhaust fumes. The blaring horn droned on  
and on.  
  
"Jean?" Scott asked. She looked at him blankly for a  
moment, then caught the meaning of his request. She smiled and  
laughed.  
  
"No way, Scott! You have got to be kidding me!"  
  
"Come on. Just plant one little thought - see if he couldn't  
find something more interesting than attacking my eardrums."  
  
"'Mutant Menace Taking Over America's Interstates," she  
said into an invisible microphone in her hand. "Film At Eleven!"  
  
For the faintest fraction of a second, Jean was shocked to  
feel a real wave of anger launch off her husband. It was almost  
corporeal, a seething thing that caused her to widen her eyes and  
shrink back in her seat toward the window. Before she could even  
articulate the feeling to herself, though, Scott's brow furrowed in  
concern and all thoughts of the blaring horn seemed to depart. He  
reached over and touched her trembling chin.  
  
"Jeannie? You okay?" As quickly as it had come, her  
concerns were abated. There was no anger *in* this man. Not for  
her anyway. There was only affection.  
  
"Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." She took his hand and smiled.   
"Brain fart, that's all." He grinned that charming grin at her, the  
roguish one that nobody else had ever seen, and turned back to look  
out at the crawling traffic. Jean went back to the story she was  
reading, continuing to hold his hand, secure in the telepathic  
awareness of his love. The trucker kept honking, and behind his  
glasses, Scott's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. He was so  
focused on the eighteen-wheeler that he never noticed the driver of  
the black sedan, or the hard attention that the pale man was paying  
to them.  
  
***  
  
Everything was wonderful. Every year, Charles Xavier  
threw two Holiday parties. The first was for neighbors and friends  
in Salem Center. The second was a freer flowing affair with a  
guest list that would bring out half the armies in the world, but that  
wasn't until New Years. His students thought of the earlier party as  
the Closet Ball, because all the residents of the Graymalkin House  
spent the time pretending to be something they were not. For years  
now, Scott and Jean had been the unofficial host and hostess of the  
bash. They arranged the catering and prepared the public portions  
of the house -- why the hell else would they be dealing with the  
ridiculous mid-morning traffic out of the City in the middle of the  
holiday crunch.   
  
Jean enjoyed it in a house-playing sort of way. She liked  
hosting the Closet Ball in the same way that she enjoyed decorating  
the apartment she shared with her husband. It gave her a sense of  
normalcy that she found appealing. The party was always on the  
Friday when school let out in Weschester County so that local  
families could bring their kids. They ran and jumped in the halls,  
reveling in a way that adults had long since forgotten. For that brief   
night, the Xavier School became a real social center for the  
community, and Jean was the belle of the ball.  
  
After what seemed like hours on the road, the couple finally  
drove through the Salem Center town square and toward the house.   
It was Thursday, and they had a great deal of work to do before the  
next night's festivities. It was common enough for adults to child-  
proof their houses before kids came over. In the Graymalkin house,  
this was especially important. There had nearly been an incident  
three years before. While the mansion was being rebuilt, security  
was less tight than at any other time. Silby Monroe, the daughter of  
the owner of a local hardware store almost stumbled into the  
subterranean portion of the house, and only Logan's quick thinking  
had spared Xavier a great deal of explaining.  
  
Logan. There had been a confrontation before he left.   
Recriminations. Shouting. She hoped he would come back from  
wherever he went so that they could sort things out. Hurting friends  
was never easy, and it seemed that lately, more and more of Jean's  
ties to those she was closest to were becoming disconcertingly  
insubstantial.  
  
The SUV pulled up to the gate and it began opening even  
before Scott could reach out and key in the code. The Professor  
knew they had arrived. When a person with telepathic abilities  
knew people for as long as the Professor had known Scott and Jean,  
they gained an almost preternatural awareness of the other. Jean  
thought that Xavier probably knew when they were on the way by  
the time she and Scott crossed the George Washington Bridge.   
Jean herself had the same sort of sense with Scott. Indeed, for  
many years now they shared a more consciously created rapport -- a  
psychic connection that what seemed to be a different Jean had  
forged with Scott high in the mountains of New Mexico years  
before.  
  
It was amazing. Jean had a piece of Scott in her head all the  
time, and he had some of her as well. It wasn't a telepathic  
connection, exactly. Instead, it was really as though a shade of the  
consciousness of one resided within the mind of the other. Their  
connection had survived a great deal. It maintained itself across  
space and time and dimension, their intense love surviving all  
manner of heartbreak and sadness. Their awareness had even  
survived Jean's death, from a certain point of view. As they drove  
up the winding driveway, Jean frowned.  
  
"Scott?"  
  
"Mm-hm?"   
  
"The other day in the diner, when I was choking?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"I called out to you -- did you hear me?" Scott turned to her  
and raised an eyebrow.  
  
"Nope. I got the message when you started throwing dishes  
around, though."  
  
"I know, I know. But it's weird, don't you think? I feel like  
we haven't been as connected for the last few weeks. Like our  
rapport is . . ."  
  
"Yeah," Scott said very enthusiastically. He pulled up in  
front of the house and parked. "I thought I was the only one  
noticing that. I wonder what's causing it?" Jean was a bit surprised  
by the force of his response -- as though he had been waiting to say  
exactly these words. Before she could answer, he went on.  
  
"Maybe we ought to do something to try and firm it up, you  
know. Try and reestablish the connection."  
  
" I could . . ." Scott smiled and opened his door, cutting her  
off as he stepped down onto the gravel.  
  
"Definitely. We'll definitely figure out what to do real  
soon." He shut the door and marched toward the house. Jean  
watched as the front door opened and Xavier greeted her husband.   
Scott's mood seemed light and happy, filled with holiday spirit.   
Jean shook her head as she hopped out of the SUV and began  
walking toward her two favorite guys. Everything was wonderful.  
  
6  
  
Barefoot was the nicest restaurant on the town square.  
Despite Kitty's loss of time, she had only been a couple of minutes  
late getting to the bistro. When she approached the maitre d, he  
gave her the message that Miss Walker was running late, caught in  
the Christmas traffic. Kitty chose a table under the heaters on the  
patio, and the haughty man appraised her bedraggled appearance  
as he led her through the faux-French interior to the outside.   
Everyone else was dressed to the nines, and Kitty felt exposed.   
Still, it was nice to be anywhere other than Harry's with a fake ID.   
  
As she sat waiting, she looked up at the burner. Waves of  
heat shimmered in the air around it, giving the sky beyond a  
tremulous, illusory quality. As Kitty waited, the lunchtime crowd  
began to arrive. She recognized two men at a nearby table: local  
news reporters from the UPN affiliate. They sat talking about the  
Presidential inauguration, and it bothered Kitty that she had paid  
national affairs so little attention during the preceding year. The  
future of their very existence hung in the balance, yet the super  
heroes of Gramalkin Lane preferred to destroy buildings and blow  
things up than work to get out the vote.   
  
It was not the first time that Kitty thought that Warren  
might have it right by coming out of the mutant closet and  
declaring himself as Angel before the world. The pyrotechnic  
battles between good and evil might make for great news, but they  
did little to advance the cause of equality. If anything, saving the  
planet only seemed to alienate the people more. The Friends of  
Humanity would not exist if there weren't a very real set of fears  
in the population. Her own family had been scared to death when  
she was growing up, convinced that some nightmarish  
Armageddon loomed right around the bend. Judging from the  
conversations ebbing and flowing around her, local journalists and  
barristers still held that belief.  
  
"Katherine?" Kitty looked up to see a red haired woman  
who couldn't have been too much older than herself. She had a  
single blond streak, and was dressed in jeans and a turtleneck  
sweater. Any concerns Kitty had about being too casual for  
Barefoot evaporated, and she waved at her lunch date. The woman  
smiled and crossed the patio with a bookbag cavalierly slung over  
one arm. She arrived at the table and held out her hand, beaming.   
Kitty took it.  
  
"I'm so sorry to be so late. I'm Rose Walker. It's great to  
meet you!" Kitty grinned hugely at the adult treatment. Since  
returning to the Graymalkin house, it seemed that everyone other  
than Logan held the mental image of her as a thirteen-year-old  
named Sprite in the front of their mind. Now there was a stranger  
treating her as an equal. The women sat down.  
  
***  
  
After a brief conversation with Scott and Jean about the  
guest list, Charles Xavier went into town to finish his Christmas  
shopping. As he wheeled himself around the town square, he  
grimaced at the changes that had come over the last several years.   
Slowly but surely, the local businesses were being replaced by  
national chains. John Monroe's hardware store had become an  
Ace franchise, and Benjamin Haseed's electronics shop was  
acquired by Best Buy. As more and more people used the county  
as a suburb of New York City, it lost the very flavor that attracted  
Charles to the locality. There were times when Emma Frost's  
offer was more and more appealing. It would still be decades  
before the outside world appeared on her rural Massachusetts  
doorstep.  
  
He wheeled himself into Storyopolis, a children's  
bookstore that had been in existence even when he was a child.   
Elspeth MacReady was behind the counter, and gave him a wave  
when he entered. She gestured to the door into the stockroom. He  
had been well acquainted with Elspeth's mother for a time, and the  
daughter liver up to her legacy. When the local mothers first met  
this prodigal upon her return to take over the store, they feared for  
the direction the storytelling haven would take. Charles  
remembered that the whole of Weschester was abuzz about the  
pierced and tattooed young woman; it became a mental beehive.   
Every time he came through, he would reach out to taste the town  
with his mind, and he would find great amusement at the gossips  
and their down home malice.  
  
Naturally, Xavier quickly befriended the outsider. Mutant  
outcasts were not the only ones he held an abiding affection for,  
and he readily empathized with the young woman's dislocation.   
Things had turned out for the best as Elspeth was every bit the  
talented spinner of tales that her mother had been before her.   
Every Thursday after school, the smaller children of the town (not  
to speak of their parents) would sit on the floor of the shop in  
spellbound attention as the raven haired young woman made the  
Grimm Brothers sing. That she told the old versions of the stories,  
the dark ones that gave parents pause, but they were held as fast by  
the teller as their little ones. Whenever Charles was in town, he  
tried to come in and listen.  
  
Today, there would be no stories. This close to Christmas  
and Hanukkah, the shop was incredibly busy, and it was all Elspeth  
could do to keep up. There was a line at the desk of people  
eagerly buying the latest Harry Potter adventure, so Xavier did not  
intrude. He knew what he had come for, and required no  
assistance. He wheeled through the door to the stockroom, and  
inhaled the unique air perfumed with the scent of old books.  
  
There were times Xavier felt a degree in library science  
might be as valuable as telepathy. Though he could have found a  
new edition of the book he was seeking at Amazon or Barnes &  
Noble, what he required was older. As always, when he told  
Elspeth, she responded with a wry smile and said she could get it  
in a week. He knew that the only thing she prized as highly as the  
telling of a good tale was the discovery of one.  
  
An oaken table dominated the rear of the dusty room.   
There were fewer books back here. These were the special orders,  
the fruit of MacReady's quieter labors. Xavier knew that he was  
not her only wealthy client. He wasn't the only person who called  
her late at night seeking texts that a great many people in the  
daylight might find objectionable. During the incident of the  
inferno in New York, Xavier had required accounts of the  
underworld more detailed than those that could be found in Dante,  
and Elspeth had known just where to look. As he came to the shop  
to retrieve his prize, Stephen Strange exited with a parcel under his  
arm. The men said nothing as they passed, though they held no  
special enmity for each other. It was simply understood -- this was  
neutral turf.  
  
He found the manuscript he had been seeking, twelve  
vellum pages covered by a flowing script, corrections, scratches  
and notes in the margin. Though rare, Charles did not think that  
this writing was in any great need of secrecy, so he came in the  
middle of the day. Indeed, he was not entirely sure why he had  
been so compelled to find the poem. To find the very first  
handwritten edition of the poem. He only knew that he had a  
difficult time sleeping of late, and that the same images had come  
to his mind time and again: a stranger in black, a figure in red, the  
sound of boot heels on stone and two houses with two brothers.   
The dreams had grown more and more disturbing, until one night  
he awoke with a pressing need for the item in his hands.  
  
The bell over the front door of the shop jangled in the  
distance as customers exited. Xavier looked up, "hearing"  
Elspeth's approach before she entered the stock room.   
  
"'My first thought was, he lied in every word,'" she recited,  
coming through the archway. "'That hoary cripple, with malicious  
eye askance to watch the working of his lie.' Wasn't easy to come  
by a handwritten manuscript, Dr. Xavier. 1835 is a bit old for  
originals."  
  
"I thank you very much, Elspeth." He turned his chair  
around and regarded her. She was looking at him with something  
like concern. After a moment she raised a thick parcel of  
packages.  
  
"I boxed up your other presents, too. The kids at the party  
will enjoy their favors."  
  
"Excellent. The Browning Poem, how did you find it."  
  
"Weather's beginning to get cold, Charles," she said.   
Elspeth never discussed how she uncovered the things she did.   
Had he wanted, Charles might have found out for himself without  
her ever even suspecting, but he had long since learned that some  
secrets were better left untouched. "Seems like a storm's  
coming."  
  
"It might be." He made a decision on the spur of the  
moment. "You are coming to the party tomorrow night?"  
  
"Of course. I wouldn't miss it."  
  
"You know, I throw another one. It's a smaller, more  
rarified affair on New Years Eve."  
  
"Mm," she acceded with a smile. "I've heard whispers."  
  
"Would you like to come? I suspect it might be more to  
your liking." She seemed to consider for a moment, sticking her  
tongue into her cheek. Just as she began to reply, the bell above  
the door rang. Elspeth looked toward the front, then took the  
manuscript.  
  
"Let's play it by ear. Have a look around for a couple  
minutes, and I'll put this in with your other things. Remember to  
keep it out of direct sunlight." She left the room.   
  
Xavier looked at the other tomes on the "private" table for  
a moment, tempted to see what the other exclusive clients were  
buying. Appealing as the idea was, he somehow knew it would be  
the wrong thing to do. Besides, he wanted to get home and study  
the poem for clues to his dreams. "Childe Roland to the Dark  
Tower Came." Charles went out among the children.  
  
***  
  
"I'd call it 'weird shit,' Katherine."  
  
Kitty laughed at the description. Simple as hell, she  
thought, but devastatingly accurate. She took a sip from her San  
Pelligrino and listened as Rose continued. "Seriously. I have seen  
things over the years that are way beyond impossible. I've been to  
places that shouldn't exist."  
  
"Like Vegas?" Kitty asked. This time it was Rose's turn to  
laugh. The two women hit it off immediately, entering a relaxed  
banter that was the farthest thing in the world from what Kitty  
expected. She figured that it would be a more or less  
straightforward interview -- a series of college essay questions for  
a freak school. "How has being a mutant affected your life?"   
Instead, they had not yet touched on the ostensible reason for their  
visit, preferring to talk about the unusual world in which they  
lived.  
  
"Exactly like Vegas," Rose said. "I've only been there  
once, and I totally lost my shirt. Not pretty. Want to know the sad  
thing?"  
  
"Pray tell?"  
  
"I never left the airport. Really, lost everything to the slots  
in terminal B."  
  
"That's gotta hurt. I've been to Vegas one time, as well.  
Me and some . . ." she thought for a moment. "Friends went there  
for work, so I didn't get to do very much in the way of gambling."   
One of the news guys at the next table answered the shrill musical  
tone of his cell phone, and began talking in hushed and excited  
tones. When his compatriot tried to ask what was going of, the  
first man all but shushed him.  
  
The waiter arrived with their meals. Kitty had tried to  
order a soup and salad from the expensive menu, not wanting to  
break Rose's bank. The other woman had laughed at this, insisting  
that Kitty get whatever she wanted. "I may look like a starving  
artist," she said, "but I'm actually filthy rich."  
  
"I didn't realize that writing short stories was so lucrative."  
  
"Old money," Rose had said, ordering a vegetarian entree  
expensive enough to break Kitty's meager budget for a week. She  
winked across the table, and Kitty decided to live it up. It might  
be ramen noodles at Graymalkin whenever Ororo wasn't around,  
but she would be a gourmet today.   
  
She took a bite and the carrot ginger stew was everything  
she expected. Rose continued. "You didn't miss much in the City  
of Sin -- the only thing you'd want to see are the strippers anyway.   
The point I was making is that the Big Scary Stuff, the super hero  
battles and dimensional rifts and Galactus and all of that, none of  
it has anything on Weird Shit. The creepy stuff you see from the  
corner of your eye, you know? A closet door opening in the dead  
of night."  
  
"It was only the wind," Kitty said in a dramatic voice.  
  
"Could be. But I always have the feeling that it could have  
been something else. Something *Other,* you know?"  
  
"I lived in Great Britain for a while, and one time my ex-  
boyfriend and I made a trip down to London for the weekend."   
Rose rolled her eyes heavenward, and Kitty paused.  
  
"Don't even get me started on British guys. Open  
wounds."  
  
"I can dig it. Anyways, we'd seen a play down in the West  
End and were walking back to the hotel when we came upon this  
homeless guy who was crashed out on the curb. We sort of edged  
away, instinctively. I know how bad it sounds, but you kind of  
think . . ."  
  
"Sure, you know somebody's going to spare change you, so  
you keep your head down and try to go with the flow and avoid it."  
  
"Exactly. Pete and I go by trying to ignore the guy, but in  
my peripheral vision I'm giving him a full on read, and it was  
scary. It was one of those foggy, rainy nights and the guy's clothes  
were soaked and ripped all to hell. One of his legs had these metal  
spokes coming out of the skin like he'd broken his leg.  
  
"Gam . . . a friend of mine has one of those things on a leg  
right now, and I'd seen them before, so I kind of know what they  
are supposed to look like. This guy's was wrong. Just wrong. It  
looked like the skin had receded around the posts, like the guy was  
just mummifying around it. Like he'd been drained, somehow.   
And here's the scariest part."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"I only saw them for a second, but I swear to God that this  
guy's eyes are as white as my napkin." She reached into her lap  
and held it up for emphasis. Rose nodded. "So we go on for a  
block, maybe two. Pete's going on and on about how there's this  
pub we have to check out and whatever, but all I'm doing is  
thinking about the homeless guy. I'm more and more sure that we  
just passed a dead man without even trying to do anything about it,  
and we aren't the sort to wear blinders.  
  
"Finally, I stop and tell Pete that we have to go back, and  
he pisses and moans for a second before he sees how serious I am.   
Finally, I drag his ass back and we go for, like, five blocks, almost  
all the way back to the theatre. Then I make us turn around and  
head back, totally freaking out."  
  
"No way." The reporters at the next table suddenly exited  
the restaurant, talking animatedly into their cell phones. They  
practically ran. At the same time, a beeper went off at the table of  
a pair of upscale business women. One of them looked at the  
message, and hurriedly stood to go and use the phone inside.  
  
"Yeah," Kitty went on. "The guy was just gone.   
Disappeared into thin air in the space of maybe two minutes. I  
always think to myself that if I'd have just shown a little more  
courage, or curiosity or empathy or . . . whatever when we first  
went by . . ."  
  
"That something different might have happened. Apathy is  
very seductive, Katherine. You're only human."  
  
"But I'm not, Rose," Kitty said quietly. "That's why we're  
here. Isn't it?" Walker nodded.  
  
"That is why we're here, Katherine. Let me tell you about  
my book." Rose's face took on a more serious cast, and she began  
to say something when the alarms went off at the fire station  
across the square. The fire trucks' sirens blared, and they tore  
from the building, horns shouting imperatively that it was time to  
move out of the way. After they had gone, Rose looked at her with  
raised eyebrows. "Dramatic enough?" she asked.  
  
Neither of them had any comprehension of how dramatic  
things would truly become in the wake of those sirens.  
  
***  
  
Flipping through an edition of "Alice in Wonderland"  
beautifully illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger, Xavier felt his patience  
eroding when he heard the sirens. A steady stream of customers  
had been coming into the store, and Elspeth hadn't begun putting  
together his delicate parcel. Now his stomach was rumbling and  
the day was slipping on toward afternoon. Children ran about,  
some staring unabashedly at the man in the wheelchair, and though  
the days of self-consciousness had passed long ago, he still  
disliked being the center of attention. Simultaneously, he had a  
pretty mean case of the holiday blues. A heavyset man walked  
through the open space with his son seated high on his shoulders.   
The boy clearly thought of his father as a deity, and Charles felt  
some longing for the same type of relationship.  
  
The shop was momentarily illuminated by the flashing  
lights of two engines and an ambulance, and the customers looked  
toward the front windows. It was rare in the quiet community for  
a full station alarm to go out. Xavier felt a brief intuition of  
trouble, and he felt around with his mind, seeking anything  
anomalous. All he found were the vaguest of shadows --  
*something* was going on, but Charles knew no more than anyone  
else in the room.  
  
Elspeth looked at him from behind the counter, as though  
peripherally aware of his consternation. For just a moment,  
Charles wondered if she might not have a bit of latent telepathic  
ability herself. She told the customer in front of her that it would  
be just a moment, and began wrapping his package. He wheeled  
through the crowded store, momentarily pleased by the almost  
subliminal way that people automatically cleared the lane for a  
wheelchair. As he reached the counter, Charles stopped suddenly.  
  
Without warning, he felt a musty wind pass through the  
room. The odor was not unpleasant, exactly. It was just old and  
unattended to. "Like the house," he thought. What was striking  
was that though he perceived the phenomena as a gust of air, he  
knew full well that it occurred only in his mind. A palpable,  
tactile psychic draft.  
  
Elspeth leaned down toward him, frowning. She put the  
package on his lap and reached forward to put the back of her hand  
on his forehead, checking for a fever. He heard her question echo  
around her mind before she actually spoke the words.  
  
"Are you all right, Doctor Xavier?" She asked. She  
unconsciously pulled her black cardigan around her shoulders,  
though the heat kept it warm in the store.  
  
"I'm fine, Elspeth. Thank you again. Think about coming  
to the party." Xavier smiled at her then wheeled himself to the  
door. Elspeth watched him for only a moment before going back  
to ring up another "Goblet of Fire." Somehow, her supply never  
seemed to run out.  
  
Xavier adjusted the package and reached forward and open  
the door when the entryway obliged him and did the job on its  
own. Charles looked up to see the chubby man with his son on his  
shoulders holding the door open.   
  
"Thank you very much," Charles said. "Merry Christmas."   
He wheeled himself out onto the busy sidewalk and felt  
snowflakes. Despite Al Roker's warnings, he hadn't dressed  
warmly enough for the day. Still, he could get a bit more shopping  
done before returning home to help Scott and Jean. He began  
moving toward his next stop when he heard the voice behind him.  
  
"Be, Be, Be, Beware," stuttered the baritone. Xavier  
whirled, raising his psychic defenses. All he found was the fat  
man in the doorway, his face far away. On his shoulders, the  
man's son looked down with confusion. Why were they still  
standing here? Xavier began to respond when the man spoke  
again.  
  
"Beware the Crimson King."  
  
"What did you say?" Charles demanded, moving forward  
in the chair. The man shook his head abruptly, and waved his  
hand as though shooing some invisible fly. Once again, Xavier  
detected the musty smell, and he telepathically lanced into the  
man's consciousness. Presents, presents, I never get it done in  
time, mile high debt getting hungry god little Stevie getting heavy  
freaky guy in wheelchair looking at me freezing  
outsidewinter'sheremerrymerry . . .  
  
"Merry Christmas to you, too," the man said. He smiled  
and stepped inside, allowing the door to shut behind him. Charles  
stared after him for a moment, considering. In the distance, he  
heard more sirens. The man had just been thinking normal  
thoughts. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Charles moved  
on down the walk, annoyed that the crowd was thickening.  
  
"Crimson King?" he muttered.   
  
The going was painfully slow amidst the throng of  
shoppers. Indeed, the crowd was almost at a standstill. Xavier  
looked up to see a large group clustering around a window, and he  
ascertained the first recognizable signs of panic. Little indications  
of it came off the people like sparks. A woman bolted from the  
crowd, running toward her parking place and frantically dialing on  
her cell phone. Though he did not like interfering in the minds of  
others, he planted thoughts in the minds of the people in front of  
him -- move left, step right - and the horde created an aisle.   
  
Charles approached the window and immediately  
understood both the sirens and the nauseating fear that kept  
rippling through the mass. Though he could not hear through the  
glass, the visuals broadcast by the televisions were more than  
enough to tell the whole story.   
  
A news anchor talked wordlessly with a graphic hovering  
menacingly over his left shoulder. He was moderating the  
comments of Ralph Reed, who had moved on from the Christian  
Coalition to the even more conservative Friends of Humanity.   
Though he could not read lips, Xavier could see the fury Reed was  
spouting, and the subject was easy to place given the ever present  
graphic; "MUTANT MENACE" dominated the screen, written in  
letters meant to simulate blood. Reed finished his diatribe, then  
the commentator spoke earnestly into the camera for only a few  
seconds before the scene cut to an ariel view.  
  
The assembled mob gasped, and one or two terrified  
parents quickly departed. Xavier was rare to surprise, but even his  
mouth opened slightly in wordless wonder. How? How could  
something in his own backyard have escaped his notice? On the  
screens of the TVs, there were easily a hundred law enforcement  
officers in front of the Weschester Unified High School. They  
ranged from local cops and New York State Police to the black  
four-doors that screamed federal government more loudly than if  
some insignia were emblazoned upon them. The school had been  
taken over by what the press was now calling "hostile metahuman  
elements."  
  
Xavier telepathically contacted Rogue. She had driven him  
into town, and he wanted the car immediately. He wheeled around  
and parted the crowd again, pulling to the curb. His student  
responded that it would only be a moment, and while he waited for  
the black Mercedes, Charles reached out to the others. The X-Men  
had work to do, and time was running dangerously short. With  
this level of media scrutiny, the plan would have to be swift,  
cunning and secretive.  
  
As he considered his options, any thought of a "Crimson  
King" vanished from Xavier's mind, and that was just fine.  
  
***  
  
Rose thanked the waiter and took a sip of her latte. She  
took it vegan, made with soy milk instead of cream. Kitty liked  
hers the same way, but this often earned her nothing but laughter  
from her peers in the Graymalkin house. Superheroes tended to be  
a meat and potatoes bunch despite the reality that they were hunted  
with nearly as great a regularity as the animals they consumed.   
Kitty dipped a sugar cube into her drink, fascinated by the way the  
coffee infused the white sweetener with color, giving it life. Rose  
watched from across the table and continued her story.  
  
"For reasons that nobody can really discern, my kid brother  
has turned into this huge baseball fan. He can go on and on for  
hours about stats and batting averages and RBIs. He'll just drive  
you crazy with it. There isn't any really obvious reason for Jed's  
interest; he never played baseball growing up. He didn't get to  
*play* at all.  
  
"He had it really rough as a kid." She paused for a  
moment. Kitty was about to say something to break the silence  
when she finally went on. "But he seems to have made it through  
all right."  
  
"Maybe that's why he likes it."  
  
"Hm?"  
  
"Baseball isn't just baseball," Kitty said. "It's all bound up  
with these long held notions of apple pie and mom and the shining  
example of American Democracy. Maybe your brother, Jed likes  
it because of what baseball represents." Rose nodded.  
  
"That's very perceptive, Kitty. You could be right. It's as  
good a reason to watch that boring shit as anything else, I guess,"  
she grinned. "I don't watch that fake stuff myself. I like pro  
wrestling."  
  
The porch had virtually cleared over the last several  
minutes, a rain of cell phones and beepers. Even the wait staff  
huddled inside, gathered around the bar's TV like they were  
converging around a fire for warmth. The two women had been so  
involved in their own meandering conversation that they hadn't  
really paid attention.  
  
"I smell what the Rose is cookin'," Kitty answered.  
  
"Nice." They laughed for a moment before the redhead  
continued her story. "Anyway, about a year-and-a-half ago I got  
him tickets to a World Series game in Atlanta . . ."  
  
"Oh, don't tell me . . ."  
  
"Yep. *That* game. Game six between the Braves and the  
New York Yankees. The longest seventh inning stretch in the  
history of the sport." Though she couldn't say it to Rose, Kitty  
remembered the day well. Very well. She had almost died.   
"There was a huge rumbling in Turner field and suddenly *he*  
was there.  
  
"I'd seen Magneto on the news, of course. But never in  
person. Hell, I don't think I'd even seen a mutant in person before  
-- plenty of weird shit, but never a mutant."  
  
"Nice to know I'm in the same category."  
  
"That's not what I . . ."  
  
"Don't worry about it. Go on."  
  
"Not much to tell that you didn't see repeated on the news  
four hundred times. Magneto appears and crushed the jumbotrons  
into little suitcases and tells the entire audience that 'these men  
before you, the strongest your tired race has to offer," Rose used a  
deep voice to emulate Erik. Kitty thought the impression pretty  
good. "'They are nothing before the power of Homo-superior, yet  
you continue to hound us across the earth! Well, no more!'"  
  
"You know, he's wrong there, by the way."  
  
"What?" Rose asked.  
  
"It's not 'Homo superior.' It ought to be 'Homo novus'   
'new man.' We'd make a lot more friends if we didn't have  
people running around yelling about superiority"  
  
"Fair enough," Rose said. "Like I said, there's not much to  
tell that you didn't see. Magneto decides to hold the whole place  
hostage to show the world that, I don't know, he has a big dick or  
something. The X-Men show up and a battle royal ensues. Now  
this is the thing that gets me." Rose leaned forward, looking Kitty  
deep in the eye. "This is what got me thinking about writing a  
book, about what it must be like to grow up a mutant in this  
patently insane world. "  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"It was the crowd. How they behaved. You'd expect a  
panic or to get trampled or something. Sure, they were afraid  
when Magneto was ranting, but once the X-Men got there, they  
settled into their seats. They watched the whole thing like it was  
just the bottom half of the seventh. You want to know the most  
absurd part?"  
  
"Tell me."  
  
"After a couple of minutes, one of the barkers began selling  
beer again." Kitty shook her head in disbelief. Thousands of  
people had nearly died that day, and people were selling hot dogs.  
  
"Jesus."  
  
"The worst thing was that I just sat there watching like  
everyone else. We hound mutants, Magneto said. And I guess we  
do, though it's not as bad as a few years ago when it looked like  
the registration act might pass. At the same time that people call  
for mutant blood, though, we watch the front page heroes and  
villains with a weird kind of awe, like Michael Jordan.  
  
"I have to write about that, Kitty. That's why I want to talk  
to somebody like you. It's such a compelling story - to grow up in  
a world prejudiced against you, but also unaware of your  
individual existence. In the world, but not of it."  
  
Kitty frowned at Rose's statement. It was close to  
something she herself had thought only a few days before. In the  
world? Not of the world? Hadn't she thought those very words?   
And there was something else, something familiar and pre-  
ordained, right at the periphery of her consciousness.  
  
"Rose, I think something's happening here. With us  
meeting." Rose looked at her curiously. "Something beyond the  
ordinary. Weird shit. Something . . ."  
  
Kitty suddenly looked up. She tilted her head as though  
listening to somebody, but there was no voice on the air. Rose  
immediately felt concern for her new friend and began to stand  
and come around the table when Kitty held up a hand. The  
younger woman stood so abruptly that her chair fell over behind  
her. She began backing away from the table.  
  
"I'm sorry," she said.  
  
"Kitty?"  
  
"Thank you for lunch, Rose. I really had fun. I just . . ."   
She turned and ran directly to the ivy covered brick wall that  
separated the patio from the sidewalk beyond. Kitty turned back  
one last time. "It's an emergency. I *have* to go."  
  
She bolted right at the wall. Rose involuntarily gritted her  
teeth, almost closing her eyes rather than witness the impact. The  
girl would need a doctor. Her mind didn't really have time to  
comprehend it when Kitty simply ran right through the barrier,  
disappearing through the wall.   
  
Rose sat for a moment, slack jawed. Adrenaline hit her  
system, and she gasped and practically fell our of her seat, her eyes  
wide in shock. She clutched at her stomach, standing alone on the  
patio in the growing cold. At last, she stumbled toward the exit,  
hurrying as fast as her watery legs could carry her.  
  
7  
  
The Library of Echoes was filled with more shadow than  
light. The whistling of the heavy winds echoed nearly fifty yards  
down the wide chimney from the ground above, and by the time  
the sound reached the bottom it reminded Logan of a banshee  
screaming. A dust storm was beginning to rise, and though they  
were protected from any real danger due to their depth, eddies of  
thick dust swirled through the cavernous room, playing in the  
bright cones of light that the halogen lanterns cast. There was a  
dangerous and hot smell on the air, smoke raised as the cool grit  
sizzled when it touched the lamps. Worse, the light stands had  
begun to list dangerously in the gale. Logan had convinced  
Juniper to send the workers and students home for the night and  
extinguish most of the flickering torches.  
  
Now, Juniper stood in one of the shallow pools of  
illumination looking for all the world like a bandito out of some  
Mexican cowboy picture. She wore a red bandana over her face  
with her safari hat pulled down tightly on her head. Despite the  
multiple distractions of the coming storm, she had not moved a  
muscle in nearly an hour. She sat on a stool unperturbed by the  
sand that occasionally whipped around her, meditatively focused  
on the computer slowly finishing its task. At any moment, it might  
spit out the final color coded map of the room, exposing the  
answer to the riddle of the ancient space. Logan felt admiration  
for his friend, but also a tinge of worry at her obsession. He had  
felt a focused preoccupation like that a time or two, and it rarely  
ended well.  
  
For his part, Logan was every bit the expectant father. He  
paced in broad circles around the room, the soft soles of his boots  
crunching on the fine layer of gravel covering the sandstone floor.  
As the small generator chugged away, Logan looked up at the  
scaffolding reinforcing the weaker, northernmost wall of the room.  
Good thing that they had worked so hard to shore up the place; if  
the storm got really bad, the displacement all the digging had  
caused might test the stability of the giant room.  
  
The more detail they gathered, the more unique the Library  
of Echoes turned out to be. Its design seemed almost predisposed  
to collapse; in some ways, it was miraculous that the whole place  
had not simply crumbled before the millennia. There was a  
massive pivot beneath the room, as though the floor of the space  
could turn like a top. Stranger still, the segments above and below  
the weird recesses in the wall were separated by a layer of earth  
not native to this part of Egypt -- it was more like shells than sand,  
serving to buffer the spokes from the solid sandstone. To Logan, it  
seemed like a Ferris wheel with seven cars that had tumbled over  
on its side.  
  
He continued on his path, moving away from the light and  
into the rear of the Library. Even in the dark, the blackness of the  
tower stood out, almost seeming to radiate an inkier blackness  
than night brought on its own account. The giant column and its  
spokes appeared to be made of black volcanic glass, but the  
material seemed almost *too* smooth and untouched. Except for  
the exploded top section, the artifact was entirely untouched by the  
ravages of time -- it did not bear even the slightest scouring from  
three thousand years of dust, dirt or age. Had Logan been even a  
bit more curious about this anomaly, he might have made a call to  
the states and asked McCoy to come to Egypt with a thingamajig  
or a whatzit to analyze the material. However, his curiosity did not  
override his desire to distance himself from the New York Crowd.  
Especially members of the crowd who might talk to Jean.  
  
For a moment, the room was illuminated in a bright orange  
glow as heat lightening torched the sky. The electric  
incandescence was powerful enough that it even roused Juniper,  
who looked up from the screen. The workstation was set up at one  
side of the room, and Logan was a faint shadow at the other, barely  
distinguishable from the darkness as he reached the half-way point  
in his circumnavigation of the room.  
  
"It is almost finished!" she called. The howling wind  
snatched the sound of her voice away, and a man with any less  
sense of hearing might not have heard her. As it was, Logan  
nodded quietly, momentarily forgetful of the fact that there was no  
way in hell that she could ever read his subtle movement. The  
room flashed again, its air seeming alive with billions of particles  
of dust in the lightening's dancing brilliance. Juniper stood,  
wincing at the pins and needles in her feet. She began walking  
toward her solitary friend as much for a leg stretch as anything  
else.  
  
Logan stared up at the spoke above him. It ran from the  
tower into the flat face of the wall, but it wasn't really part of it.  
The sky far above open up with electric light once again, and the  
black surface reflected and refracted it in shifting patterns. For a  
moment, the central column seemed to retain a residual glow from  
the lightening even after it had dissipated, the dust swirling around  
it in an eerie and artificial counter-clockwise pattern. Logan  
watched the momentary phenomena and frowned. It reminded  
him of the pigeons he and Jean were watching right before the  
argument, the weaving, repetitive, impossible patterns pf their  
flight.  
  
They had been sitting on the roof of the apartment building  
where Jean and her husband lived. Rooftops had become the only  
isolation one could find in New York. Since moving in, Jean put a  
great deal of work into her small rooftop garden. To her, it  
brought a sense of normalcy into the very heart of the chaotic city.  
It wasn't anything ostentatious, but there was grass, there were  
bushes and a couple of small spotted trees. She could walk  
barefoot, and this seemed very important to her. Logan was  
barefoot, too, unconsciously wiggling his toes in the soft grass as  
he and his friend sat on a park bench he had brought her from the  
grounds at Xavier's.  
  
"It's great, Logan," she said. "It fits perfectly."  
  
"Thought you'd like it."  
  
Despite the beauty of the place, there was nobody else on  
the roof. He never asked, but Logan had the suspicion that Jean  
had quietly planted a no trespassing sign in the minds of her fellow  
tenants. Jean did that sometimes. Logan wondered if she was  
even aware of it. They were looking across the street at the roof of  
the adjacent building. A small group of happy twenty-somethings  
were having an early summer barbecue, laughing and drinking  
without a care in the world.  
  
Jean and Logan had been eavesdropping on them -- nothing  
malicious. Indeed, it was almost unconscious, a sort of vicarious  
pleasure in the enjoyment of others. Logan could hear their  
quietest conversations despite the sounds of city and distance, and  
Jean's listening abilities were not limited to sounds. They were  
not actively listening in. Instead, they only sat quietly, sharing the  
silence that only years of familiarity could bring.  
  
On one edge of the opposite roof, a blond girl named Sarah  
drunkenly told her friend Denise that she was madly in love with  
the dude who lives in 6-A. She was going to marry him, move to  
Connecticut and have his babies. Just as soon as she learned his  
name. Jean and Logan laughed, particularly amused that the man  
Josh from 6-A was standing with at the grill was his lover.  
  
"I think Sarah will survive," Jean said. Logan snorted. He  
was searching for some retort when they both heard a gasp from  
the opposite roof, coupled with the unmistakable whooshing sound  
of a thousand birds taking flight. The pair looked to the next roof  
over and saw the source of the neighbors' amazement. The whole  
party gathered on one edge and pointed to the spectacle before  
them, laughing and shouting. Even at a distance, it was easy to tell  
that the jocularity was colored by more than wonder -- it was also  
touched by fear.  
  
Jean and Logan stood in amazement as well. They walked  
to the edge and stared. A flock of pigeons had taken flight as one.  
They moved so close together that it almost appeared as though the  
air itself had come to life. In a thick line, the birds circled the   
roof in a tight rotation. Clockwise, counter, and back again. They  
moved in tight figure eights, a single living thing without so much  
as a single bird breaking the column. The birds began to spiral  
upwards, climbing away from the roofs that made up the East  
Village city scape, higher and higher. Logan and Jean squinted,  
fighting the glare. The birds ascended in a closer and closer group,  
the mass making a dark silhouette against the sun. Then, with  
arbitrary suddenness, the grouping scattered, each of the hundreds  
of birds seeming to fly in a completely different direction.  
  
With a musicality that never ceased to amaze Logan, Jean  
tossed a full-throated laughed at the sky. She looked back at him  
with that radiant smile, and it was so infectious that even Logan  
broke his normally stoic expression to chuckle with her. She  
looked back to where the birds were for a moment, then walked to  
the center of her little garden. A warm breeze was blowing, but  
somehow the rooftop was an oasis even from the normally toxic  
smells of the city.  
  
"Wow," Jean said. "That was pretty amazing."  
  
"Yup." As he always did around Jean, he wished he had  
poetry in him. Instead, all he could do was nod.  
  
"Thanks for bringing the bench. It's great. It really  
completes things."  
  
"No one much uses it since you left, so I figured it'd be  
better at your place. You've done a good job up here, Jeannie."  
  
"Thanks. I want this place to become special, to really be a  
place where you can take a respite from all the bullshit, you know?  
Where you can just . . . It's not like I've had too much time to  
really work on it yet." She smiled ruefully. "Gotta save the world  
once a week."  
  
Logan nodded. It had been a rough time for everyone,  
pregnant with change. Kurt and Pete abandoned the cause,  
Gambit, Psylocke and Jubilee arrived, old enemies had switched  
sides at the same time that heroes had fallen. It was as though  
some otherworldly force had decided to turn the world on its axis  
as a kind of preternatural wake-up call. Little stability remained.  
Jean had gotten married.  
  
She looked over at him sadly, and he knew that on some  
level he broadcast that last thought. Jean shook her head and  
walked over to him, putting her hand on his cheek. She smiled.  
  
"I love my husband, Logan."  
  
"I know ya do, Jeannie," he said. "He's a good man."  
  
A cricket called out on the roof, singing a song in the store  
bought foliage. Jean looked over at it and smiled. Logan frowned  
and shook his head.  
  
"You got crickets in the middle of the village?"  
  
"I know. Weird, huh? They just came out of the blue a  
week or two ago. You ought to hear it at night, there must be  
thousands."  
  
"You guys must come out here every night, eh?"  
  
"Not so much." She shrugged. "Scott's pretty busy these  
days. Teaching at the Professor's, helping out up in Mass. We see  
each other less now than before we got hitched."  
  
"Where is he now?" Logan concentrated on keeping his  
thoughts down deep. He was pretty good, or at least Jean was very  
polite.  
  
"He and Rory Flannigan are doing a Habitat for Humanity  
thing."  
  
"Rory . . ."  
  
"A friend of his."  
  
"Oh. Okay." He stopped, listening to the cricket for a  
moment. The insects on the roof might have been telepathic  
themselves, because several more joined in the singing. Logan  
thought carefully about his next words, and Jean clearly felt them  
coming. She folded her arms across her chest and moved away  
from him. Logan slumped his broad shoulders and spoke.  
  
"Look, Jeannie, I'm not sure how to say this, but . . ."  
  
"Then don't, Logan. Don't say it. Don't ask me."  
  
Of course, he had asked her. It was one thing to have your  
thoughts overheard. It was quite another to speak them aloud.  
There was an irrevocable quality to hard words spoken between  
close friends -- once uttered, they could not be taken back. They  
could not be ignored. As the afternoon faded into evening, two old  
friends argued on the roof even as the neighbors partied the day  
away. In the end, there were recriminations and denials and real,  
cold anger. After he was gone, Jean sat alone in her garden  
listening to the crickets sing to her all night.  
  
By dawn the next day, Logan was bound for the Middle  
East.  
  
"You all right?" Juniper asked in the dark. The noise from  
the storm above them was loud enough that she nearly had to shout  
to be heard above the gale. Logan looked over at his friend and  
grinned. He pulled a cigar from the inside of his jacket and  
cupped his hand to strike a match and light it.  
  
"Fine, darlin'," he said. He puffed on the cigar and looked  
back up at the spoke. "I been thinkin' about this room. You think  
that it could be more than just some big algebra equation or  
church?"  
  
"What are you getting at?"  
  
"A fulcrum below the floor, spokes to a disconnected basin  
in the wall; it's like a wagon wheel. A machine."  
  
Juniper looked up and around the space. The lightening  
above was now so frequent that the room was practically strobing  
with dusty light. Slowly, she nodded. "It's possible, Loagn. It is  
definitely possible that they were trying to build some kind of  
device.  
  
"It would make since given their mythology. These  
weren't priests or magicians, they were scientists looking to find  
the nature of the universe. Maybe this was some kind of . . . I  
don't know. A telescope?"  
  
"Could be. But it was below ground even then, right?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"What did they believe? What were they looking for?"  
They began walking across the Library, back to the computer. The  
electric storm above was so violent that the shadows in the space  
seemed alive, dancing with a consciousness of their own.  
  
"We think that Hypatia believed that our world was only a  
reflection of the perfect world, that it was striving toward  
perfection. She got this from Plato's idea of the forms. The  
earlier mathematicians, though, the ones before her believed that  
there was even more to it than that."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"They believed that there was a perfect world, too. That  
there was a place that the earth was aspiring to be. But they  
believed that ours was not the only world aspiring to this  
perfection. The ancient Algebraians thought that there was a near  
infinitum of places just like our own, whole universes almost  
exactly like our's continually aspiring toward perfection. They  
thought that if only the right formula were found, we could ascend  
to becoming this ultimate place that all of the others wanted to be.  
Until then, we were on equal footing with everyone else."  
  
"Maybe this *is* the equation, Junie. Maybe the room  
itself is the engine to drive the world up the ladder . . ." They  
arrived at the computer station Logan saw the message flashing on  
the screen. He ran forward, and Juniper bolted after him.  
  
"What is it!?!"  
  
"It's finished.!" Logan stopped before the old laptop. He  
reached forward, then pulled his hand back. Juniper ran up next to  
him and looked at the flashing dialogue box on the screen:  
  
RENDERING COMPLETED  
  
Her lips parted, and Logan thought that she was going to say  
something, but nothing came out. She reached toward the "enter"  
key with a trembling hand, then drew it back, putting her fingers  
against her mouth. She giggled girlishly and looked at her  
companion.  
  
"I'm so nervous," she said.  
  
"Go on, Juniper. This is your moment." She took a deep  
and shaky breath, than reached forward and tapped the key. The  
screen on the PC went blank, and the shadows in the room  
continued to dance of their own accord despite the fact that the  
lightening had slackened. The air smelled of ozone and  
caramelized sugar.  
  
Logan began to worry when the screen popped back up. At  
first, it was a black and white overhead view of the library, crudely  
drawn. The individual colors of every root character began filling  
in. An orange square in the bottom, a purple one at the top, a  
green one, red, purple again, yellow. They picked up speed,  
rapidly filling the screen. The light gave Juniper's face a ghostly  
quality, her smile wide and amazed. It only took seconds for the  
image to begin to coalesce from a random selection of thousands  
of colored pixels into an image.  
  
Juniper made an unhappy noise as the image clarified  
itself. Logan looked over at her, and realized that the more fully  
resolved the image became, the more the look on the  
archaeologist's face darkened. She straightened up and began to  
back away from the screen.  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"My God, Logan. I think you were right." The screen was  
readable now. There was a pattern, a very clear one. The builders  
of the Library of Echoes had laid the symbols on the floor in such  
a way that the three root groupings twined around each other to  
form a complicated patters. Circling the tower in the center of the  
room there was a serpent eating its own tail. Next to the walls of  
the room, right beneath the spokes, there were seven more snakes.  
From the view above, they appeared to be devouring the seven  
altars recessed into the wall. The total effect was that the central  
column was surrounded and the recesses were under siege.  
  
"The Ourboros," Juniper whispered.  
  
"What does it mean?" The lights dimmed, and the  
computer's screen flickered. Juniper looked truly scared.  
  
"New age spiritualists and hackneyed historians will tell  
you pretty stories about how the Ourboros is a symbol for infinity.  
The it's indicative of everlasting life, the symbol of the Roman  
god, Janus and a great deal of other bunk. But it is not those  
things, Logan. It is so much worse. Especially here."  
  
The image on the screen finished forming, and for a  
moment it was clear. Countless thousands of individual etchings  
secretly representing a beast who strangled the terminus of the  
whole space. The generator coughed weakly, then with a loud pop  
it stopped. The screen went blank and the lights died, causing  
Juniper Faraway to gasp. Logan's eyes were good, and he could  
see how scared his friend was even in the darkness. The howling  
of the wind was terrible.  
  
"What does it really mean, Juniper?"  
  
"What have I done," she whispered, more to herself than  
anyone else. Logan realized that it wasn't only his excellent sight  
that allowed him to see her. He looked back toward the center of  
the room and saw that the tower itself was emitting a faint, anemic  
glow from deep in its core. The spokes likewise hummed with  
internal illumination. Logan softly took Juniper's shoulders in his  
hands and looked deeply into her face.  
  
"It's all right, Junie. Now tell me what's going on."  
  
"It is not infinity, Logan. The snake is devouring itself,"  
she finally said. "The Ourboros is entropy. It is the conclusion of  
all things. If this is a machine, it was not constructed to answer  
the questions of the universe. It was built to tear it all down."  
  
Logan went back to the desk and picked up a flare. The  
wind from above died out suddenly. He struck it, the sputtering  
flame brightly lighting the area around him. It made him squint  
for a moment while his eyes adjusted. He turned his attention  
back to Juniper, who was all but shaking. The only sound was her  
breathing and the hiss of the flare.  
  
"So what, Junie? Write an article and move on to the next  
thing."  
  
"Don't you see? The tower is the universe itself. All of the  
universes, the top upon which everything turns. I've just found the  
key to a machine that was built to destroy the universe."  
  
"Get a hold of yourself here! The machine doesn't work!"  
He pointed his flare toward where the top of the tower had  
shattered on the ground, continuing to look at his panic stricken  
friend. If anything, she looked even more frightened. "And even  
if it did, it is broken!"  
  
"That's only cause those dumb sons of bitches used the  
wrong key, Ole Hoss." Juniper screamed and Logan whirled to  
face the new arrivals.  
  
The tall man in the bright yellow duster walked out of the  
darkness, his boot heels clopping on the sandstone. He had not  
come alone. Four others walked loosely behind him, all dressed  
like desperados from a second rate western. In each and every  
case, there was something wrong, some bit of the paraphernalia  
that took the usual imagery of the period just a bit too far. One of  
the strangers wore a hat with a bright green brim, another's boots  
had spurs so long that they dragged on the ground.  
  
With a flip of his wrist, Logan tossed the flare between him  
and the approaching men. He widened the stance of his feet,  
bending his knees slightly while his mouth turned into a snarl. The  
man in yellow stopped, and once again, he and Logan stared at  
each other from across a gulf. This time, though, Logan was  
clearly outgunned. The regulator spat a thick wad of tobacco juice  
on the floor in front of him, the shifting light of the flare  
momentarily reflecting off his silver teeth. The juice seemed to  
sizzle on the ground.  
  
"But the doc here found the right one," he said.  
  
"Thanks for the info, bub," Logan growled. "Now that you  
and your buddies answered our trivia question, you best clear  
out."  
  
"'Fraid not, friend. Tak! We got orders to bring that pretty  
little filly back home to build the boss a new 'gin with a good key.  
You just stand aside and you won't get hurt none."  
  
The man in the yellow coat took a step forward and his  
buddies followed. Logan smiled, barring his canines like a rabid  
animal. Juniper stepped forward behind him, ready to offer some  
kind of compromise when the impossible happened.  
  
*SNIKT!*  
  
"Logan!" Juniper screamed, hopping backwards. Three  
gleaming blades popped from the back of his right hand with a  
metallic clang. They were each nearly a foot long, and they looked  
sharp. The man in the yellow coat stopped his advance, tilting his  
head to regard his opponent's newly discovered ability.  
  
"You boys sure you wanna dance with me?"  
  
"Son, your lady friend comes back to New York with us.  
Whether you go home or not is your call." The regulator  
turned slightly and nodded at his posse, and they fanned out beside  
him, forming a wide, thin line. "Around you or through you, Hoss.  
Tak! You decide."  
  
"Logan!" Juniper whispered imperatively. She was ready  
to try and run for it; he could hear it in her voice. The cowboys  
began to walk forward, their hands at their sides, fingers twitching  
as though they were ready to draw six-shooters. The light  
reflected off the teeth of the man in the yellow coat as he  
approached, bloodlust in his grinning eyes.  
  
"Stay behind me, Juniper," growled Wolverine, extending  
the claws in his left hand. "Stay behind me. And you better cover  
your eyes."  
  
___________________________________________________________________  
  
To Be Continued  
  
NEXT: Separated by over ten thousand miles, members of the X-  
Men face enemies from both without and within. Forget what you  
expect and come back to read . . .  
  
X-Men: Half Lit World  
  
Chapter III: Hell in Small Places   



	4. Hell in Small Places

Synopsis: Separated by thousands of miles, members of the X-Men battle  
enemies from both without and within.  
  
Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Neil Gaiman and Stephen King created and  
own the rights to most of the characters below; I'm just borrowing with no  
intent to profit. There's graphic violence in this chapter, as well as adult  
language, disturbing imagery and mature themes. You have been warned.   
I'd love to hear what you think - give me a shout at  
XanderDG@hotmail.com.  
  
Previous chapters can be found at the Fonts of Wisdom  
(http://home.att.net/~lubakmetyk/), with the Prince of Dreams  
(http://angelfire.com/mn2/AlexSisterWolf/), along the King's Highway  
(http://angelfire.com/hi4/DowntheRabbitHole/DarkTower.html), and in  
the Itty Bitty Archives (http://hivemind.hispeed.com/).  
  
_____________________________________________________  
  
X-Men: Half Lit World  
  
by  
  
Alexander Greenfield  
  
Chapter III: Hell in Small Places  
_______________________________________________________  
  
. . . Our Story So Far . . .  
  
  
In an isolated field in rural Montana, the ATF surrounds the cabin of  
suspected child killer, Joshua Leonard Kirby. When communications  
break down and an earsplitting noise assaults the field, only Agent Palmer  
Canon finds the courage to enter the charnel house. Inside, the experience  
he faces is impossible and otherworldly, and when he returns to the field,  
he carries a redheaded child in his arms. Neither Canon nor the child  
have been seen since.  
  
Half a country away, changes are coming in New York. Scott and  
Jean Grey-Summers have moved into an apartment in the City, away from  
the Salem Center house that serves as both headquarters of the X-Men and  
the home of their youth. Jean grows concerned about a treacherous  
distance in her relationship with Scott at the same time that more and  
more of her friends move apart. Ororo is absent, Warren is detached and  
Jean's argument with Logan drove him away months ago. She has  
become lonely. On some level, she is becoming angry.  
  
For his part, the problems with Jean sent Logan all the way to  
Alexandria, Egypt. He has been helping his friend, Dr. Juniper Faraway on  
an archaeological dig. As they have delved deeper and deeper into the  
secrets of the ancient Library of Echoes, events in the town have become  
strange. Now, on the very night that they have discovered an epiphany  
that may shake the very foundations of modern science, five tall strangers  
have come demanding to take away Logan's friend. Wolverine faces  
these low men even now, and the outcome of this battle is completely in  
doubt.  
  
Jean and Logan are not the only X-Men who feel isolated. Since her  
return from Great Britain, Kitty Pryde has wondered if the super hero's  
life is for her. As she watches the other denizens of the Graymalkin house  
go through their trials and tribulations, the young woman thinks more and  
more of the broader world outside. She answers an ad in the paper to  
meet with a fiction writer doing research for a story about mutants. Over  
the course of their lunch together, she and Rose Walker hit it off. Just as  
their interview seems to cross the gulf from professional into friendship,  
though, Kitty is called away. An emergency has come to the X-Men's  
own backyard.  
  
There are other events, to be sure. An Initiate quickly rises through  
the ranks of the Hellfire Club even as the order builds a new headquarters.   
A young mutant discovers his powers and thinks of revenge on those who  
have wronged him. Charles Xavier dreams. Not the dream he has held  
close to his heart for so many years, but a new set of dreams. He dreams  
of a tower, of a figure in red and a man in black, and of the end of all  
things. The mentor of the X-Men knows that it's coming, and has no idea  
how to stop it.  
  
1  
  
When Alicia Monroe passed a note to Doug Philips, she extended her  
hand surreptitiously behind her as though she were the James Bond of first  
period algebra. Her face held Mr. Williamson as he wrote on the board, a  
look of studied concentration frozen on her pretty face, nodding her head  
slightly as though she agreed. "Yes, sir," she might have been thinking, "I  
do believe that formula is correct." She even scribbled lightly with her  
free hand, miming note taking. Doug reached forward under the desk  
with his long basketball player's arm and captured the paper, his fingers  
lingering with Alicia's for a moment. He unfolded the note and smiled as  
he read before he noticed Kenny out of the corner of his eye, staring  
frankly at him.  
  
Doug turned to the smaller boy with a challenging look. On any other  
day, Kenny might have looked hurriedly away in an attempt to avoid  
notice, but today he only held Doug's stare, regarding him with a cooly  
indifferent countenance. After a time, Philips broke the eye contact -  
Kenny's eyes never wavered.  
  
The boy knew the note was about him. "Isn't Kenny Thompson a  
mutie freak?" it probably asked. Kenny figured that most of the notes he  
saw passed were about himself. Most quiet whispers he overheard in the  
halls, as well. It seemed to him that the entire school was a hive, a great  
single living thing only brought into the world to torment him.   
  
"Isn't Kenny Thompson a Mutie Freak?" Kenny thought that  
today Alicia would learn the answer to that question.  
  
The bullies must have been planing something big for him,  
because nobody had said a word to the wild haired child all day. Even  
after first period, Doug said nothing to Kenny about the staring. Instead,  
he and Alicia laced their hands together and pretended to be a loving  
couple as they walked down the hall together. If they thought they fooled  
Kenny into thinking they were going to do anything other than whisper  
about him, they were mistaken.  
  
Kenny walked downstairs to the basement for his second period  
class, and he wished that he had washed his sewing project before he put  
it on under his civilian clothes. It was itching terribly bound so close to  
his skin. Still, once he shed his disguise, things would become different.   
As he descended the stairwell, a big senior whose name Kenny didn't  
know bumped into his shoulder.  
  
"'Scuse me, bro," the guy said as he climbed. Kenny could see the  
smirk under the boy's apologetic face. Who would be smirking come  
lunchtime?  
  
The late bell rang for second, and kids scattered from the hall.   
Kenny did not increase his pace even a hair, and by the time he stepped  
out onto the hall of the basement floor it was empty. He stopped and  
tilted his head slightly. The floor of the hall had been cleaned overnight.   
It reflected the pale glow of the fluorescent lights. It reminded Kenny of a  
hospital.  
  
He closed his eyes and the fluorescent lights dimmed. There. Better.   
The only lights in the windowless hall now were the haphazard strings of  
holiday lights strung along either wall. Festive. Near the end of the long  
corridor, a moon-faced hall monitor peeked out of a classroom, sure to  
demand a hall pass in a petty display of power. The boy caught one sight  
of Kenny, his hair standing perfectly on end, eyes rolled back, and he  
decided against a confrontation.  
  
Kenny resumed his pace, heading toward his classroom when he heard  
a cricket chirp. The noise was distant, muffled, and the boy frowned. He  
went toward the song, stopping in front of the janitor's closet - it must  
have been trapped in there. Kenny reached forward to try the door, but  
jerked his hand away the second it touched the knob. It was cold as ice.   
He listened to the cricket song for another moment and went to class.  
  
Second period passed uneventfully, and third period was phys. ed.   
Coach Vogler assigned Kenny to floor hockey, and he was picked last. By  
this time, such an event was neither surprising nor insulting; it was simply  
the way things were. Kenny warmed the bench for the entire game.   
When Lake Anderson asked him if he wanted in with a fake smile on his  
heroic face, Kenny didn't respond. He knew that the older boy only  
wanted an excuse to high stick him or exercise some other pedantic  
torture.   
  
Kenny had to change after class. He decided that it was as good a time  
as any to show off his sewing project. He threw his jeans and flannel shirt  
into the locker room hamper; he wouldn't be needing them again. When  
the other boys began filing in from the shower, their jaws dropped when  
they saw Kenny. Some of the kids averted their eyes, holding back their  
snickers and others laughed openly.  
  
"Nice, Thompson," said Doug Philips, wearing only a towel. He  
pulled the terrycloth from around his waist and snapped it at Kenny,  
laughing jovially as he moved around the row to his locker. Coach Vogler  
came in carrying a large mesh bag containing the various balls used for  
PE, took one look at the boy and threw his head back. His laugh was full  
throated and loud. Fifty-six minutes later, another loud noise would issue  
forth from his lungs, though no joy would be contained in that one.  
  
For his part, Kenny gave no reaction to any of the heckling. The fourth  
period classroom buzzed with quiet whispers. "What is he thinking?" a  
girl would ask. "What a total freak," came a response. He paid no  
attention to the lesson on civic responsibility, preferring to watch the  
clock. Lunch grew closer, and when the bell finally rang, the hungry  
students bolted the room like pigs to a trough. Kenny sat, breathing  
deeply while Mrs. Bedrosian erased the board. She turned around and  
jumped slightly upon seeing the boy.  
  
"That's a nice outfit, Kenny," she said. She put the eraser in the tray  
beneath the blackboard, raising a small dust cloud. The lights in the room  
flickered, and Bedrosian looked up, then back down at her pupil. "Where  
did you get it?"  
  
The boy looked at her, but it seemed that his thoughts were really  
elsewhere. "I made it," he said. He reached into his bag and pulled out  
the headpiece, pulling over his skull and tying a knot under his chin. Mrs.  
Bedrosian frowned as she felt the small hairs all over her body stand  
simultaneously on end. She began to quickly gather her things.  
  
"You better shake a leg. That lunch line is going to be long."  
  
"I sewed it all myself. See?" Kenny stood and walked slowly to the  
front of the room. He peeled a glove from his left hand and held it out for  
the teacher to see. A latticework of thin white scars covered his fingers; a  
tribal tattoo in reverse. Almost unconsciously, Mrs. Bedrosian backed  
away from the small, masked boy. Her hand went into her pocket, feeling  
for her pepper spray.   
  
"Do you see?" He held his palm right in front of her face and her back  
touched the blackboard. The cool metal of the spray bottle reassured her,  
and she flipped the safety cap off. There had been an incident before,  
years ago. Bedrosian would not allow history to repeat itself. She  
smelled the thin, acidic scent of unwashed sweat on the boy's hand.  
  
"That's very nice, Kenny," she said in her most authoritative tone.   
"Now, you'd better get to the dining hall before you get a tardiness  
detention."  
  
Kenny pulled his small hand back and for a brief moment she thought  
that the strangeness was over. Then the lights in the room dimmed as he  
slid his slick palm back into the odd looking glove. Bedrosian felt the hair  
on her head beginning to stand.  
  
"We wouldn't want that, would we Mrs. B?" he asked. "Tell me.   
When Bruce Moyers and his buddies were beating me up during lunch,  
why didn't you give them a detention?"  
  
"I, I . . . I don't know what . . ." the boy reached forward to touch her  
face and she violently jerked the pepper spray key chain from her pocket.   
It snagged, and in that fraction of a second, Kenny's eyes flicked  
downward. He looked back at her and smiled. Suddenly, her hand  
twinged violently - it was as though the pepper spray had turned into a live  
battery. Mrs. Bedrosdian screeched, her lip trembling as the boy reached  
up and put his hands on either side of her face. His touch was almost soft,  
loving.  
  
"They always called me a teacher's pet," he said distractedly.  
  
The students in the cafeteria didn't react at all when the lights  
flickered. It was a cacophony of adolescent noise. A cauldron of  
flirtation and fantasy, of filigree and feasting as children on the edge of  
adulthood tried their hands at maturity. When the large double doors  
opened and the boy who had been Kenny Thompson walked in fully  
regaled in his sewing project, thin wisps of smoke wafting off his gloved  
fingertips, a few people near the edge of the room giggled. For the most  
part, nobody noticed at all, even when Kenny turned around and flipped  
the locks on the doors.  
  
The sniggering spread as he moved through the room, some even  
making catcalls. When he got to the front of the room, though, kicking  
trays calmly out of the way and standing on top of the steam table, the  
laugher petered out. Kenny spread his arms, and the hair on more than a  
hundred fifty boys and girls simultaneously stood up. Coach Vogler stood  
from where he was talking with his basketball players. He chomped his  
gum and walked toward the freaky kid with his usual swagger. Kenny  
Thompson smiled at him as he approached, and the lights went out.  
  
2  
  
"Stand aside, Hoss," said the tall man in the yellow coat. His  
impossible smile indicated that he wanted Logan to do anything but. "The  
Doc's ours."  
  
Wolverine rested down on his haunches, his feet wide apart and his  
fists balled at his side. The five tall strangers in their strange, inaccurate  
cowboy gear fanned out in a semicircle. With one hand, Logan waved  
Juniper behind him as he countered the movements of the regulators;  
above all, they had to avoid being surrounded. Their metal teeth glittering  
in the dying reddish light of the flare, the grotesque, unnatural smiles  
never left the faces of the strangers. The line began to close in, a cloying,  
sweet and rotten smell drifting off of them and permeating the vast  
gallery. They seemed to glide as they moved, as though their feet were  
not touching the ground. The only sound was Juniper's hyperventilating,  
and the metallic treble of spurs dragging along the sandstone floor.  
  
The tall man in the yellow coat was clearly the leader, leastwise, he  
had done all the group's talking when there had still been room for it.   
Him first, then. Wolverine snarled and sprang forward, his adamantium  
claws extended. These guys had no idea what they were up against.  
  
Logan was among the fastest and most deadly fighters in the world.   
Nothing surprised him much in a scrap, so when the tall man simply  
backpedaled, he only thought to press his advantage for a moment. He  
swung his claws in a wide arc, coming close enough that he tore the man's  
yellow duster. He didn't realize that things had already gone to hell.   
  
Wolverine rolled forward on the ground, planning to take out the tall  
man's legs. In the mere moment when his eyes were off his adversary, he  
felt a sharp pain in his back as the low man put the boots to him. The  
thin, reedy man kicked Logan so hard that he flew back through the air.   
Were it not for the adamantium lacing his bones and reinforcing his spinal  
column, his back would have broken. Instead, he bit back the pain and  
turned back toward Juniper.  
  
"Logan!" she screamed. She was backing toward the wall, and had  
moved the computer table between her and the men.  
  
He saw the ploy immediately. The others were almost upon Logan's  
old friend. He surged forward, and a cowboy in a green coat whirled  
around, seeking to backhand the smaller man. Wolverine ducked under  
the wild blow, grabbing the stranger around the waist, his wide shoulder  
pressed hard into his torso. Logan pivoted, arching over backwards and  
taking the cowboy with him. The man's head slammed into the ground  
before Wolverine completed the bridge, bringing forth a satisfying crack  
that echoed through the chamber. His neck twisted to an angle north of  
obscene. Before any of the others could respond, Logan kicked up and  
was already on his feet, his broken opponent twitching beneath him.  
  
"Come on, boys," he growled. Two of the others turned around, their  
wide, steel smiles never portraying surprise at their comrade's defeat,  
never betraying pity at his destruction. They simply moved, charging at  
Wolverine.  
  
He set his feet, but the tall men were deceptively fast. Their hands  
almost seemed to blur as the rushed forward, and Logan was pushed  
backward under their openhanded assault. They were not hurting him;  
rather, each small blow pushed Wolverine back another inch, another step,  
another foot. In moments, the cowboys' tsunami pushed him the length of  
the hall. Behind his opponents, he could see Juniper cowering in the  
corner behind the cowboy who wore the giant, almost comical hat. Where  
was the man in yellow?  
  
Wolverine did the only thing he could. He stopped trying to block and  
resist the slapping onslaught and allowed his body to go limp, collapsing  
to the floor. The strangers overcompensated. One of them overreached,  
toppling over Logan. The other stopped in time and reached down to grab  
Wolverine a moment too late. He whipped his legs around, sweeping the  
feet of the tall man and sending him hard to the ground. Logan whirled to  
his feet and grabbed the prone cowboy by the scruff of his neck and  
rearing back his other fist. He extended the claws on his other hand,  
prepared to part the cowboy's head from his lanky shoulders when Juniper  
screamed behind him.  
  
Logan turned and saw his friend in the arms of the stranger across the  
room. He picked her up over Juniper's stringent resistance - she was a  
dervish twisting and screaming and scratching, but she could not escape  
his grasp. Without hesitation, Wolverine bolted toward her, leaving the  
men on the floor alive behind him. The light from the flare finally  
sputtered out, and in the final flashing moment Logan saw a shadow move  
in front of him. He didn't have time to break his momentum at all.  
  
The man in the yellow coat threw his arm out. He was thin, reed-like,  
but to Logan, it felt as though he had run throat first into an iron bar. His  
torso felt like it exploded, and he pin wheeled madly through the air,  
landing in an ungainly heap. Logan tried to rise, but he couldn't get a  
breath. His throat burned, and he could feel liquid trickling down - blood.   
He coughed, momentarily powerless even as he heard his friend  
screaming. A boot appeared before his face.  
  
"Quit playing with the little sumbitch," the man in the yellow coat  
commanded his compadres. "It's almost time to git. Tak!" The two  
regulators who Logan left behind approached, and Logan saw the man in  
yellow move toward Juniper and her captor. The room was only half lit  
by the faint glow emanating from the black obelisk in the center.  
  
With her arms held behind her, Juniper shrank as the tall man  
approached in the darkness. She couldn't see Logan, but she heard the  
beating he was taking, the unmistakable tone of flesh smacking into flesh.   
The tall man smiled his glinting smile at her and leaned down, nearly  
touching his nose to hers. His breath was cool and it reeked of rare meat.  
  
"You've done the King a great service, ma'am," he said softly. There  
might have been reverence in his raspy voice. "Time to move on, now."   
He reached up to run his spindly fingers along her cheek and Juniper was  
overcome by nausea and vertigo, the Library of Echoes spinning madly  
around her. The man in the yellow coat turned his head abruptly just  
before he was tossed over the computer.  
  
Wolverine threw the man hard, returning the favor from the kick.   
Blood covered his chin, glittering in the opaque light. His teeth were  
barred like an animal's. The cowboy holding Juniper released her arms to  
draw back and fight. Logan popped his claws as the regulator moved to  
come around Juniper.  
  
"The eyes, Junie!" he hissed. The stranger's hands were up, expecting  
a brawl with his stout enemy. He never thought to defend against the  
small woman to whom his face was open. Just as he passed Juniper, she  
screeched like a banshee and leapt upon his back. Never ceasing her  
toneless yowl, she dug her fingernails into his eyes, ignoring the  
harrowing sense of dislocation that touching the man caused. The  
stranger rocked backwards, desperately trying to pull away her hands as  
Wolverine rushed forward.  
  
The man reached behind him, grabbing Juniper Faraway's head on  
either side. Still spinning wildly, he threw her forward, sending her  
crashing through the cheap, collapsible table where all of the equipment  
rested. Dazed, she rolled onto her side.  
  
"No!" yelled the tall man in the yellow coat, rising to his feet. It was  
too late, though.  
  
The stranger wheeled back to Wolverine, his hands still defensively  
holding his eyes. Logan rammed his claws into the lanky scarecrow's mid  
section. Instead of what he expected, the sound that the creature issued  
was hollow. It was as though Wolverine had punctured plastic instead of  
skin, an insect's chitin rather than a man's flesh. The thing's mouth  
opened and a monstrous sound issued forth. Steam rose from its depths.  
  
His claws still extended into the creature, Wolverine barred his teeth  
and wrenched his arm upwards, into the heart of the beast. With his arm  
lodged there, he yanked his arm outward, and the entire breast of the  
stranger ripped away in one hard piece. Logan gasped as the cowboy fell  
to his knees. Instead of the wet death of a man, sand spilled from the  
creatures husk. Red-hot sand, like the embers of some infernal fire. What  
the hell?  
  
Wolverine turned to the tower in the center of the room. Its glow had  
brightened, and he could clearly see where the three strangers had  
regrouped. Low in the shifting heat the dead man's innards were  
producing, Logan growled. There would be time for the why of things  
later.  
  
"Two down," he rasped. The low man in the yellow coat came at him.  
  
3  
  
The Salem Center Council had been surprised by Charles Xavier's  
fervent support of the new sewage system. Typically, he had been the  
community's most outspoken opponent of development, fighting tooth  
and nail against the Chamber of Commerce's increasingly frequent  
attempts to turn large swaths of Westchester into shopping malls.   
However, when the new county wide wastewater management system had  
been proposed, Xavier had practically railroaded the idea through. No  
one had been more surprised by this than the X-Men themselves, and only  
now, in the cold and wet beneath Westchester Consolidated did Jean  
understand. When you had to get around fast and unnoticed, there was no  
better route.  
  
There were four of them in the stinking darkness, standing at the base  
of a ladder leading into the high school's sub-basement. Gambit had  
wanted to come, of course, insisting that he could be of use despite his  
shattered leg. Xavier had mercifully ruled against that. Though they had  
been spread across town, Jean thought, this was a good crew to have  
assembled in fifteen minutes.  
  
Cyclops led the band, the golden accents of his visor glittering in the  
shadows. His blue uniform soaked up the dark in such a way that it  
almost appeared that Jean's husband was a disembodied head floating in  
the air. Rogue's green tunic similarly blended into the bleak darkness, but  
her pale features and white stripe gave her a ghostly presence. Psylocke  
was there as well, but Betsy's skills in the dark were superior to any of the  
other's. She would only be seen or heard if she wanted to be. The others  
made Jean feel exposed in her bright green singlet, the golden firebird on  
her chest glittering like a target.  
  
If anyone else had been there to observe the oddly costumed group,  
then the strange clothing would not have been the only thing to say that  
they were crazy. All of them stood poised as though listening to  
something, but no sound other than the ceaseless dripping of distant water  
and constant drone of the fire alarm above broke the silence. Of course,  
the X-Men could hear their mentor quite well.  
  
"The press is reporting that a mutant with unknown capabilities has  
taken hostages in the school, and that SHIELD is on their way," Xavier  
said into the minds of his students. Cyclops answered aloud.  
  
"How long before agents arrive?"  
  
"Radio traffic indicates that it could be soon. Fifteen minutes? Thirty,  
perhaps? You will have to act quickly to save the children and get the  
mutant out. Have you received the plans, Psylocke?"  
  
Jean shuddered internally when Elizabeth Braddock's face appeared  
right next to her own, bathed in the blue light from her palm pilot. Had  
Betsy been standing so close the entire time? The woman's hair appeared  
black in the darkness, and her brow furrowed as she studied the graphic  
before her. "It's a bloody labyrinth," she said. Psylocke's lips never  
moved. "Three floors, multiple halls."  
  
"Do we know what the mutant can do, Professor?" asked Rogue.  
  
"No. There is some kind of interference stopping me from  
establishing a firm link."  
  
"I've felt it, too," said Jean. "There are so many other voices up there.   
So afraid. They're screaming for help."  
  
"The only thing I know for certain is that this is a child."  
  
"An angry, hateful one," Psylocke added.  
  
"We must try to save it anyway, Elizabeth. That is what we do."   
There was no room for debating Xavier's summation. Though the team  
could feel him subtly in the backs of their minds, the time for  
conversation was clearly over. It was in their hands now.  
  
Scott's head dipped for a moment, thinking, then it came back up.   
"We'll separate. Psylocke, Rogue: take the main floor," he whispered.  
"I'll take the top. Jeannie . . . Phoenix, take the basement. Quick sweep,  
no engagement. We meet in the middle in ten minutes." There was a  
clang as he began up the ladder. Rogue put an arm around Psylocke and  
glided into the air, passing Jean's husband and breaking the lock on the  
access grate with her free hand. She pushed the covering easily aside and  
flew through, the pair's feet still dripping water. Everything was  
happening so fast.  
  
"Cyclops?" Jean called telepathically. Scott did not reply. He got to  
the top of the ladder and began to pull himself up through the grate.   
"Scott," she called out again with her mind. He had nearly disappeared  
through the hole. Jean stepped into the shaft of light.  
  
"Scott!" she called. He turned quickly down with gritted teeth.  
  
"Shhh!" he hissed. For an instant, Jean's lip rose involuntarily,  
snarling angrily at the dismissal. He only looked down at his wife, and  
she whispered to him imperatively.  
  
"The Professor said that Kitty was on her way and . . ."  
  
"Kitty's a big girl, Jeannie. If she gets here, she'll figure out what to  
do. We have to go right now." Cyclops did not allow and questioning.   
He pulled himself through the manhole, leaving his wife to stare after.   
Jean stood down in the sewer looking quietly at where he had been for  
almost a full minute before she rose from the stagnant water, floating up  
and through the grate, her crimson hair streaming behind her.  
  
***  
  
Kitty hadn't taken a car in order to avoid exactly the kind of  
questioning that she was now certain to undergo. A crisis had arisen and  
now she could not rendezvous with her teammates at a time when they  
desperately needed her. She was strong, a tremendous athlete, really, but  
if only she'd taken a car, she would already be with the other X-Men. As  
it was, she was running at a speed that would be considered a sprint by  
anyone less gifted but there was still more then two miles to go to get to  
the school. Xavier had clearly given up on her, and the rest of the team  
was already in the building. Still, she was Shadowcat with or without a  
uniform, and she would get to the high school soon.   
  
Sirens blared behind her for the fifth time since she left the restaurant  
and she moved as close as she could to the soft shoulder as three more  
police cars roared past. She had already seen all manner of fire engines  
and ambulances. Most daunting had been the armored CRT vehicle  
carrying a SWAT team from the New York State Police. Still, Kitty ran,  
forcing her legs to pump at an almost inhuman rate as she climbed the  
steady incline to Westchester Consolidated. Surely there would be  
something she could do when she arrived. Kitty had tried to call out to  
Xavier, to Jean or Psylocke, but their attention was otherwise occupied  
and Kitty had no psychic abilities of her own.  
  
"Maybe some psychiatric ones, though," she rasped. Her breath was  
coming harder when she heard another vehicle approaching behind her.   
Kitty scooted back to the shoulder, but the car didn't pass. She turned  
abruptly when it honked.  
  
Rose Walker looked over from the driver's seat. The sporty little  
coupe was pacing her. "Need a ride?" the redhead called. It was not a  
question. Kitty's mouth worked for a moment before she could respond.   
This was a civilian, and one she had only just met. Kitty knew very well  
that the last thing she ought to do was pull some poor innocent into a  
dangerous situation. At the same time, Kitty suspected that there was  
more to Rose than met the eye, and beside, a car was a car at this point.  
  
Kitty stopped, and Rose did the same. The younger woman threw  
open the door and jumped in. Before Kitty could say a word, Rose floored  
the accelerator and the car was picking up speed.  
  
"Rose, I need to get to the . . ."  
  
". . . high school. Figured that out on my own, Katherine. Can you  
tell me what's going on?" She took her eyes off the road for a moment to  
make contact. "What's *really* going on?"  
  
Kitty thought about it for a moment. On the radio, the usual  
programming had been interrupted with live reports of the "mutant attack"  
on the high school. Police and rescue from five counties were in route,  
and the Governor was considering calling out the national guard. Nobody  
knew how many hostages were being held, and the police could not even  
enter the building because it appeared that all points of entrance and  
egress were electrified. Kitty began to try and think of some kind of  
covering answer, something about how a sibling was a student at the  
school when they were nearly driven off the road.  
  
They were moving along at almost sixty on a two-lane country  
highway when four black sedans blew by them like they were sitting still.   
The vehicles employed no sirens. Indeed, they didn't even honk their  
horns. Rose cranked the wheel to the right to avoid the colorless parade,  
and the small car almost lost it on the gravel of the shoulder, spewing a  
cloud of dusty debris behind them before finding the asphalt again. They  
had avoided tumbling into the shallow embankment at the side of the road  
by inches.  
  
"Shit," said Kitty. Rose looked at her again, and she decided. "That  
was the reason I have to get there right away, Rose. I was at the World  
Series, too. I was on the field." Rose's lips parted slightly and her eyes  
were wide as she hit the breaks to come around a curve. They crested the  
hill and the scene that spread below them was immense.   
  
Westchester Consolidated was a squat, low building as wide as a  
football field. It was completely surrounded by the flashing lights of a  
hundred emergency vehicles, and the football field was tightly packed  
with half again as many press and concerned parents. Helicopters circled  
above. Rose stopped the car and looked at Kitty.  
  
"Are you saying . . ."  
  
"Yes, Rose. I'm an X-Man. I've got lives to save down there." Rose  
blinked at her, then began driving down the hill even as the radio  
continued its warnings to stay clear of the mutant terrorists killing our  
kids.  
  
Interlude  
  
You're dreaming. You must be. No beach's sand is so white, so soft  
under your feet, tamping down like snow if snow were warm and pleasing  
to the touch. No water ever shimmered so blue, an electric carpet, an  
ephemeral mirage, a pinkish haze hanging over everything. In the middle  
of the sea, rising infinitely into the cobalt sky is a tower, black as  
obsidian, thicker than any skyscraper, than any mountain, than any world.   
Thunder echoes in the distance, and you hear the familiar sound of a bee  
hive. It is the same one your dad smoked out behind the house when you  
were two. You had cried and cried when you were stung, and it was only  
mother's succor that silenced you, though you were too old for the breast.   
Those are the bees you hear.  
  
Then you notice *him,* though you instinctually know that he has  
been here the whole time.  
  
You call out, unsure of where you are, disoriented, but no sound  
escapes your throat. You realize that this is because you don't have one.   
You are here, you can taste the salt in the air, but you are also not here. A  
voyeur at the edge of the world. You're dreaming. You must be, because  
you realize that you aren't on the beach of a great crystal sea, but on the  
precipice of a shallow fountain. The figure in red still stands at the water,  
seeming to waver in the sourceless light. You approach him, but his  
illusory quality only seems to increase as you come closer, as does the  
sound of the bees. With his crimson cloak billowing around him despite  
the fact that no breeze seems to blow, you are practically on top of the  
figure before you realize that this is not a man after all. It has only taken  
the shape of a man for the sake of convenience. Or mockery.  
  
They are no bigger than domestic bees, only instead of yellow, they  
are red and black. They swirl cyclonically in and around each other,  
hundreds of thousands of individual creatures, but manage to hold their  
shape, giving the phantasm the look of a man with a regal appearance.   
You know somehow that this is royalty, though you would not want to live  
in his kingdom. That the man made of red bees doesn't notice you is a  
fact that you are mercifully thankful for. There's no telling what he might  
do. He might sting you, or devour you completely.  
  
Instead, the shape moves out on the water of his crystal fountain. His  
cape billows behind him, the swarm perfectly synchronized, and you  
realize that if you listen to the hissing buzz for too much longer that you  
might go completely mad. Can dreams do that? Can they drive you  
insane? There is no weight to the being, so what passes as footfalls leave  
no ripples in the water. Then you notice that the water is not what it  
appears either. Instead of liquid, the surface of the pool is composed of  
millions upon millions of infinitesimally small blue globules. They are  
small, to be sure, but large enough to see. Some of the little orbs turn  
black as you watch, the phenomenon spreading like ink on fabric.   
Everything in this space seems to be composed of smaller, constituent  
parts except for the tower itself. The monolith is solid, and everything  
orbits around it.  
  
The crimson figure moves across the surface of the pool, its head  
swinging too and fro, looking down upon the minuscule globes. Finally, it  
settles upon one of them, and seems to flow through itself squatting down  
to regard it more closely. You're dreaming. You must be, because the  
crimson swarm's thoughts are your own.   
  
What an arrogant little world, you think. So comically sure of its  
place at the center of all things. It believes that because it dreams all of  
the other dreams into being, that its destiny must not be connected to its  
bastard children. You remind yourself that this little orb will be the last to  
go, that when the raven-haired bitch closes the door on the universe  
behind her and the tower crumbles into the sea, it will be because the  
place egotistical enough to think of itself as reality has finally gone the  
way of the dinosaur. The thing that scares you the most, gentle reader, is  
that the blue orb is your home.  
  
With a loud hiss, the ruby swarm loses its cohesion, seeming to forget  
that it is pretending to be a man. It flows liquidly through the air and  
reforms at another point, nearer the tower. You notice that the areas of  
blackness are spreading, leaking from the bottom edges of the tower like  
some poisonous oil slick. The bees become a man again, and the  
wavering illusion of its hand reaches down to take hold of one of the little  
blue spheres. The bees crawl over it hefting it into the air and holding it  
before the ephemeral face of the creature. Though it has no eyes, you can  
feel it looking carefully, examining the marble in minute detail.  
  
The key is there - the key to all of the others. The key to opening all  
of the doors and bringing the whole failed experiment crashing down, and  
that is the task of the bees, the man, the Crimson King. To move the  
worlds on and finish things up. The Seven can not stop it now, nor any of  
the little gods. All of the eventualities are accounted for. As soon as the  
Breaker is in his possession, the King will finish the destiny he is designed  
for. It's already written in the blind fool's book.  
  
You're dreaming. You must be, because a normal person cannot think  
so casually about bringing about the end of the universe. But you were  
never much for normalcy at all, were you, with your dreams burned to  
cinders about you. Leave them. It's fine. Forget your petty struggles and  
pedantic concerns. Set yourself free. Become a bee, roaming without a  
care, feasting on honey and succor. All you need to do is ask - you're  
already on the path. You're almost here already.  
  
Without warning, the bees lose their human form again. There is a  
moment of panic as they surround you, but the stinging you expect never  
comes. Instead, they feel cool against your skin, the ticklish beating of  
their tiny wings massaging you. The swarm surrounds you completely,  
blotting out the light. In the darkness, you begin to understand the shifting  
hiss of the buzzing. It sounds like whispers.  
  
4  
  
Smoke wafted through the main floor, illuminated intermittently by  
the blue fire of electrical discharge coming from the light fixtures, the  
wall sockets, the screeching smoke detectors. The whole place smelled of  
ozone, of burning plastic, of burning hair. Psylocke had inhaled these  
mingled torturous scents before, in a former life she had no wish to  
remember. She stayed low to the ground when she came through the large  
double doors, keeping close to the wall. Rogue was more or less  
invulnerable to harm, but she still wrinkled her nose against the foul, toxic  
potpourri. The women were on either side of the wide hall, and the air  
was so thick they couldn't see the end. About halfway down, a rain of  
white sparks vomited out of the ruin of a flourescent light like some  
Fourth of July exhibition gone horribly wrong.  
  
"Careful, Psylocke," Rogue called over the den. She motioned at the  
floor. The sprinklers must have been activated before they arrived  
because there were pools of water everywhere. With all the current,  
things could become dangerous quickly. Psylocke looked across at her  
teammate, and Rogue felt a brief moment of dislocation. For an instant,  
she saw from her own eyes and she saw herself through Betsy Braddock's  
before the English woman spoke in her mind.  
  
"I see it. Thanks." The women crept forward, and it took all of  
Psylocke's discipline to keep from shivering. The high school was so cold  
that they could see their own breath. "Your bond dollars at work," she  
thought. Rogue snorted and Betsy frowned. She had not intended to  
broadcast that.  
  
She pulled her palm pilot from the pouch laced onto one on the bands  
of fabric on her leg and called up the map that the professor had sent her.   
The design of the hall was simple: there was a T junction up ahead, and  
the hallway terminated in the cafeteria. She relayed the map  
telepathically to Rogue, and the younger woman levitated off the ground  
and began floating up the hall.  
  
"No!" Betsy thought imperatively. Rouge stopped.   
  
"Why not just go, grab the kid, and get out?" Rogue didn't speak aloud  
either, this time. She could feel Betsy in her mind, listening for her  
answer. The first time she felt something like this, Rogue wasn't close to  
being able to identify what it was. She had been eleven, twelve maybe,  
still living life under a name half gone and half forgotten. Autumn had  
come to Mississippi and her family had gone to Oxford for the Ole Miss  
homecoming weekend. The county fair was in full swing, and as always  
the Gypsies had come along with it. It took a great deal of cajoling to get  
ten bucks out of her mother, but she knew just where to spend it.  
  
The fortune teller grinned at Rogue's younger self and launched into a  
fast talking patter that she found difficult to follow. At last, though, he  
spread brightly colored tarot cards before her and she got a strange feeling  
in the back of her mind, like an itch, or a feather-light weight. The  
fortune had been accurate, of course, at least in describing the life of an  
eleven-year-old girl. On the future, though, the man had been woefully  
inaccurate.  
  
Psylocke saw all of this in a flash, right down to the way that the  
carnival air was scented heavily with fried bread and cotton candy. All  
she responded to was the question. "It might work, Rogue. But I have a  
sense of this child and it's bloody frightening. If we spook him early, the  
other kids might be endangered." She caught a note of inarticulate  
impatience from Rogue, but she came back down to the ground and  
resumed matching Braddock's pace on the other side of the hall. Then  
she felt something else up ahead.  
  
"Hold on," she broadcast. Rogue stopped, trying to listen over the  
ceaseless bray of the fire alarm. There was something else underneath.   
Something human.  
  
Betsy tried to listen telepathically, but there were so many echoes of  
fear and terror, of anger and rage whipping through the structure that it  
was difficult to focus on an individual whose patterns were unfamiliar.   
Still, there was the sound. Psylocke didn't need telepathy for this.   
  
She looked across at Rogue and held up her gloved fist. Then she  
raised one finger, pointed forward and to Rogue's side of the hall. Rogue  
nodded and came slightly off the floor so as not to make any noise. She  
floated to the shallow alcove in front of an open door to find a young girl,  
perhaps fifteen, sitting with her knees held closely to her chest. The child  
looked at Rogue with wide eyes containing fear and hope entirely  
commingled.  
  
"Ah'm here to help you, sugah," she said, kneeling down. The kid's  
jaw trembled for only a moment before she burst into tears and lurched  
into Rogue's arms. The woman stiffened, patting the child on the back  
lightly. "It's all right. You're okay now, darlin'."  
  
"He . . . he . . . he . . . *killed* them," the girl sobbed. Psylocke  
approached them and reached down, running her fingers through the girls  
hair. Her crying began to subside almost immediately. "He's gonna kill  
everyone."  
  
"Who is, dearie?"  
  
"He k . . . k . . . killed Mrs. B!" The girl gestured behind her at the  
yawning door. Psylocke and Rogue exchanged a look, and Betsy and  
moved into the room. Rogue rocked the child in her arms there on the  
floor.  
  
"Jesus," she heard in her mind. "Jesus Christ." There was an image, a  
brief one, charred, burned. Rogue was happy when it was gone. Betsy  
golden skin had taken on an ashen tone when she emerged and knelt down  
next to the shivering child.  
  
"Who is doing this, Alicia?" The child looked up at the sound of her  
name.  
  
"I just went out to go to the b . . . bathroom. I left my friends to die.   
It's K . . . Kenny Thompson. Kenny Thompson the mutie freak!" The girl  
sobbed again, and Rogue and Psylocke stiffened.  
  
"Where are the others?" Rogue pushed Alicia Monroe from her arms  
and looked deep into the young girl's eyes. The sympathy had vanished  
from Rogue's face, at least in part.  
  
"In the c . . . c . . . caff!" She pointed to the end of the hall. Rogue  
and Psylocke stood.  
  
"Go in that classroom and wait for the police. Don't you come out for  
any other reason," demanded Rogue.  
  
"B . . . b . . . but Mrs. B . . ."  
  
"Mrs. B. can't hurt you," said Psylocke. The women turned heel and  
strode away down the hall. They never gave a backward glance. Alicia  
Monroe watched them go, shivering in the cold.   
  
***  
  
The ancient boiler was a freezing hulk, but warmth drifted off the  
school's generator in waves. It was whining in a high tone, taxed beyond  
its capacity. Jean wondered where the power was going. She stood in the  
cold room for nearly five minutes after Scott and the others had left, the  
only illumination coming from the red "EXIT" sign over the door.   
Something wasn't right.  
  
Though she could feel the tremulous fear wavering off the children, it  
was distant, an echo. Psylocke and Rogue were far afield as well, and  
Scott was only a shadow, a series of disconnected pinkish images of the  
world seen through his ruby-red visor. On one level, Jean knew that the  
others were only feet above her. She knew that she could telekinetically  
punch through the ceiling of this sub-basement room and end up standing  
shoulder-to-shoulder with her compatriots if she wanted. At the same  
time her friends, her husband felt a million miles away. A million years  
ago.   
  
Jean shook the feeling off and moved through the door. She climbed  
the wide institutional stairs up to the basement proper, passing row after  
row of the institutional cinder blocks that constituted the wall. It seemed  
that every surface was covered by the random symbols of the kids' graffiti  
tags. There were many more stairs to climb than Jean expected. It  
seemed more like a skyscraper than a school.   
  
She looked at the markings on the wall. These Westchester kids had  
nothing on their counterparts in the Greenwich Village neighborhood Jean  
now reluctantly called home. Some of their complicated work seemed to  
approach high art. The walls before her said nothing; they held only  
obscure, crosshatched pictograms Jean could make neither heads nor tails  
out of. At last she arrived at a set of large, institutional fire doors. She  
raised one eyebrow, and the doors opened of their own accord. Jean Gray  
was greeted by the sound of crickets. Thousands of them, like it was  
midnight in the bayou.  
  
Her red hair glowed in the pale light of the hallway as she stood in the  
doorway. The noise of the crickets reverberated in the empty hall. It was  
like an insect choir, though Jean could see none of the singers. The hall  
was both wide and completely empty.   
  
"Hello?" Jean asked. The crickets continued their song. The woman  
in green stepped across the threshold into the hallway when all at once the  
singing ceased. The *click* of her boot heel striking the poorly tiled  
institutional floor made a hollow noise. Jean frowned at the silence and  
stepped forward into the hall, allowing the doors to close behind her.  
  
The first thing she noticed was how much warmer it was. The air was  
moist, almost sultry, like the interior of a greenhouse. The corridor was  
different up ahead, as though the architect has changed his mind halfway  
through the process. As Jean moved along, the hallway changed, her  
staccato footfalls following behind. The linoleum gave way to  
cobblestone, and she immediately thought of how Mastermind had fooled  
her other self all those years ago. She shut her eyes for a moment, using  
all her power to reach out, but detected nothing of her old enemy. She did  
not pause to wonder why she always remembered that other's life so  
clearly.  
  
"What the hell?" She raised her eyebrows and continued, wary but  
curious. The cinder blocks were replaced by red brick. The grey metal  
lockers became trellises covered in ivory, in fragrant jasmine, and the  
featureless wooden classroom doors grew more ornate. Jean turned  
around to look back, and she could readily see the entry, the tiles, the  
blocks, the colorless institutional reality that spoke more readily of  
incarceration than education. The normalcy of Westchester Consolidated  
was still very much in evidence and only yards away. Where she stood  
now, though, Jean would swear she was outside if it were not for the cave-  
like ceiling. She walked forward again, chagrined by her own pleasure at  
the unusual turn of events. Apparently, Jean Gray-Summers was still an  
adventurer at heart, all domesticity to the contrary.  
  
"Pssst!"  
  
Jean whirled. There was a door in front of her, slightly ajar. No light  
came from within, but a distinctive aroma issued from inside:  
frankincense coupled with something darker and more organic. Sulphur,  
maybe, or asafotea. Jean opened the door with a thought and walked  
inside.  
  
***  
  
Rose almost lost control of the car when she screeched up to the  
roadblock. The young police officer in front of her actually gritted his  
teeth. He yanked his hat a little further down on his forehead and began  
moving around to her window. She looked over at Kitty.  
  
"Grab me the press ID out of the glove box!" Kitty fumbled with the  
latch as she watched the cop approach. The door finally opened and a  
torrent of papers, gum wrappers, tampons, soy sauce packets and  
miscellaneous junk spilled out.   
  
"Nice," Kitty said. Rose wrinkled her nose in response as Kitty  
fumbled through the confusing pile in her lap. The policeman arrived by  
Rose's window and tapped lightly upon it with his flashlight. The redhead  
abruptly threw a Stepford smile on her face and it was all Kitty could do  
to keep from issuing a manic chortle when she turned and rolled down the  
window.  
  
"Hi! Rose Walker and Katherine Marrymount. Atlantic Weekly."   
Kitty raised an eyebrow as she tried to find the identification.   
Marrymount?  
  
"I'm sorry ma'am," said the cop. "All press is to assemble on the  
athletic field, so if you'll kindly turn your vehicle around and join the  
others."  
  
Kitty and Rose both looked out the front window. The action was in  
front of them. The high school's parking lot was a sea of activity; cops,  
SWAT, fire and rescue rushed around chaotically. If there was a codified  
plan of action, it was impossible to identify from this perspective. The  
men in the black vehicles clustered around their cars, calmer than the  
others.   
  
"Look, officer . . ." Rose looked at his name tag, "Augarde. The story  
isn't on a soccer field; it's at the school."  
  
"Look, Miss Walker, I've heard just about everything you can think of  
today and I've told everyone the same thing: go to the athletic field. There  
will be regular briefings and . . ."  
  
"We *have* to get through, officer! There are facts here that you just  
do not understand . . ."  
  
"Forget it, Rose," Kitty said distractedly. She watched one of the men  
in black move around to the trunk of his vehicle and remove a briefcase  
while the others spoke to the man she recognized as the chief of the Salem  
Center Police Department.   
  
"But Katherine, this guy . . ."  
  
"Go *now* Rose." Kitty looked at her companion. There was a heavy  
furrow between her eyes. "Please."  
  
"Done." She turned back to Augarde, bringing a rough approximation  
of the Betty Crocker smile back to her lips. "You have a nice day now."   
Rose floored the accelerator, whipping the car around the frightened cop.   
She roared back down the road, passing a number of oncoming emergency  
vehicles and press trucks. It was practically a caravan. Before she  
reached the turnoff to the football field, Kitty reached over and put her  
hand on Rose's shoulder.  
  
"Stop here, Rose." They pulled over next to the thicket that divided  
the school from its stadium. "Thank you so much. For everything."  
  
"No problem, Katherine." Rose looked in her side mirror, checking to  
see whether the police at the road block were paying them any attention.   
They were dealing with other customers, it seemed. "Just promise you'll  
talk to me when all this is . . ." When she turned back to the passenger  
seat, she found it empty. Katherine was gone.  
  
"Oh, Rosie, Rosie," she said to herself. "You sure this is worth  
doing?" She sat behind the wheel for a moment, then came to her  
decision.   
  
5  
  
The leader of the X-Men made no sound as he moved. He entered the  
darkened gym, virtually invisible in his dark blue uniform, and quietly  
observed the large empty space. Steam rose from his breath - it was so  
cold that one of the pipes on the sprinkler system had burst. The whole  
gymnasium was covered in puddles of standing water that were rapidly  
freezing. Scott Summers moved down the steps of the painted concrete  
bleachers (fight, fight, fight for the purple and the white!), careful to avoid  
slipping on the treacherous black patches.  
  
When he reached the warping hardwood of the basketball court,  
Cyclops strode out to the middle of the floor. There was a basketball  
laying on one side of the half-court line and he reached down to pick it up.   
He dribbled once, twice, the hollow sound pinging and reverberating in  
the great, empty space.  
  
"Summers from half," he said softly. Scott heaved the ball in a  
reasonable facsimile of Dr. J's skyhook. It sailed through the air in a  
graceful arc, falling through the hoop with a satisfying *swish*. It hit the  
ground, bouncing until it rolled into the corner of the room. Scott  
watched it go, standing calmly with his arms by his side. At last he raised  
them slowly, standing like a triumphant gladiator.  
  
"Swishhhaaa," he said, the sound trailing away into the universal noise  
of a cheering crowd. Suddenly, Scott stopped and tilted his head. He  
turned abruptly around, staring intently at an open door at the end of the  
room: "MEN'S LOCKERS."   
  
Summers whistled. A single, piercing tone meant to capture the  
attention of a person in a noisy crowd. It echoed in the barren darkness.   
Then Scott heard a faint, recognizable response. Fabric rustling.   
Sneaking. Hiding. He walked to the door.  
  
Cyclops knew that he wasn't alone the very moment he entered the  
locker room. He might not have had preternaturally expanded senses, but  
he knew how to use what he had. There was an old, musky smell in the  
room; years, decades of sour sweat, of victory and defeat and blood.   
Deeper still, the smell of Ivory soap and the wet taste from the showers.   
Scott passed the first row of lockers and was aware of a more immediate  
smell.  
  
He turned down the row, passing the dull gray lockers. At the end of  
the line was a giant equipment locker overflowing with gloves and balls,  
nets and bats. Bats. Scott looked at the padlock on the locker for a  
moment before turning and walking up the next row. He stopped for a  
moment, tasting the air. Since he was a boy, Cyclops always associated  
the aroma of fear with the foul odor that those massive cans of  
government issue spaghetti would release when they were heated back at  
the orphanage. He thought he detected that now, along with the  
unmistakable bray of rapid breathing.  
  
There were two large linen hampers at the end of the row surrounded  
by towels and jocks. Summers didn't even try to hide the sound of his  
footsteps as he approached them, his boots clicking on the mildew green  
tiles. Scott was a super hero. He heard the boy plodding up behind him in  
an insipid attempt at stealth. He knew the boy's intentions before the  
child even worked them out for himself.  
  
Expending virtually no energy, Scott turned slightly and the large  
teenager nearly fell over, missing with a wild swing of the Louisville  
Slugger he carried. The bat struck one of the lockers, a crunching,  
aluminum explosion echoing through the room. Cyclops thought the boy  
looked like a frightened horse, off balance, eyes white with horror. It  
didn't last. Scott launched a straight right into the kid's jaw that  
connected with so much force that he spun around before falling to the  
floor unconscious.  
  
Scott plucked the baseball bat from the meaty boy's twitching fingers  
and stood above him.  
  
"Please, mister!" shouted a voice from the linen hamper. The lid  
slowly raised, and a smaller boy stood up. He was shaking, and tears  
pooled in his wide eyes.   
  
"What's going on here, boy? Why'd your buddy attack me?"  
  
"We thought you were Kenny! We were scared! We didn't know!"  
  
"I'm not Kenny," Scott said with a reassuring smile. He reached out  
with his free hand. "Let me help you."   
  
Scott stepped forward and the boy shrank back in the hamper,  
desperate to be away from the man with the red visor and the wide smile.   
All at once, Cyclops stopped, tilting his head. For a moment there was  
only the sound of the small boy's breathing.  
  
"Where is the cafeteria?" The boy's mouth moved, but no answer  
emerged from his dry throat. Scott leaned down into the child's face.   
"*Where*?"  
  
"Main hall," croaked the boy. "It's at the end of the main hall!"  
  
"Tend to your friend, kid." The large boy wasn't moving where he  
had collapsed on the floor, and a thin line of blood flowed down his  
cheek. Scott lifted the smaller boy from the linen basket and set him  
down on the floor. He stared up, paralyzed in fear when Summers tousled  
his hair, almost playfully.  
  
Cyclops walked to the door, then turned back with that same toothy  
smile stretched across his face. "You're safe now."  
  
***  
  
The katana breathed a metallic whisper as Psylocke pulled it slowly  
from the scabbard. She and Rogue could hear little from the other side of  
the doors to the dining hall, at least not audibly. Psylocke had been  
grimacing painfully since they had approached the doors though, and a  
single tear had flowed down her face. Rogue said nothing, but she figured  
she knew what was happening in her teammate's mind from the moment  
she had peeked through the fire window - all those terrified children. It  
had to be wearing Betsy down.  
  
"I'll make it," Psylocke said. Rogue wondered if she knew she had  
said that out loud. Then she heard the answer in her mind: "Nope."   
Braddock smiled at her, the pained look still etched on her face.  
  
Rogue stole another peek through the heavy steel door, careful not to  
touch it. Though it would not have hurt her, the steel practically hummed  
with electric current, and their adversary would certainly have been  
alerted to their presence if she sparked it.   
  
She still couldn't see the enemy. There were tables upended  
throughout the smoke-filled room, and the lights flashed in random  
strobes. The disembodied ranting voice the women heard was  
somewhere amongst them, pacing frantically. The figure's words were  
not articulate. They were little more articulate than the droning one heard  
at the Graymalkin house when your neighbor had friends in their room.   
But there was something about the pitch, something escalating, something  
mad . . . time was running short.  
  
Rogue caught Psylocke's eye and tapped her temple. Betsy nodded,  
and Rogue thought, "did you call them?"  
  
"I did," came Betsy's fevered response. Rogue also heard inarticulate  
relays from the children in the background *marymotherfullofgrace,  
marymotherfullofgrace*. "Cyclops is on his way - he said to wait.   
Phoenix didn't answer, I don't think."  
  
"It's hard to hear, Rogue," she whispered. Betsy sucked in a breath  
and held it, closing her eyes. Rogue felt another of the weird telepathic  
echoes: *prayforussinners, prayforus, prayforus*. She felt something  
beneath that, too. Something hard and flinty and hateful and similar to the  
buzz of angry wasps. *Shut up, shut up shut up!*  
  
There was a loud, electric crack and the spark shower began again  
down the hall, an electric waterfall falling to the ground. The women's  
hair stood on end, and the humming noise issuing from the door gained  
intensity. In the dining hall, a girl screamed.  
  
"Oh shit!" Psylocke yelled. She shot to her feet and whirled to the  
door, the blade in her hand glinting in the simmering light. "We have to  
go now!" Rogue grimaced as the purple-haired woman called out  
telepathically. She screamed out to Cyclops, to Phoenix and Kitty, to  
Rogue and Xavier and even instinctually to Angel. The time had come to  
move.  
  
The windows into the dining hall blared with fiery blue light and an  
earsplitting crack shot from the room. The kids inside howled as one, a  
mix of terror and pain. One scream rose above the others, though it was  
silenced quickly.  
  
"The door, Rogue!" Without a moment's hesitation, Rogue flew  
through the steel locks and table barricades, knocking them easily aside.   
Hundreds of thousands of volts of current flowed harmlessly over her  
invulnerable body, burning some of her clothing away. Terrified students  
scattered before her as she burst in, her fists balled by her sides in the  
ozone haze.   
  
Psylocke leapt forward behind her, dancing easily over the deadly  
threshold and leaping over a table. She rolled when she hit the floor,  
coming up with the katana extended at the ready position. Both women  
ignored the screaming of the scattering children. The kids had been  
cowering wherever they could, and those with the fortitude to raise their  
heads stared with a mixture of hope, wonder, fear and dread at the new  
arrivals.   
  
The two X-Men noticed the smouldering body of Coach Vogler first.   
They had both read the many stories about people struck by lightening  
whose only injuries were that the clothes had been burned from their  
bodies. Indeed, that was not far from Rogue's current state. The poor  
soul before them now, frozen forever on his knees, hands defensively in  
front of himself, begging, was just the opposite. The letterman's jacket on  
the smoking corpse was virtually untouched, but the body might have  
come right from the fire. Above him, standing atop a pile of broken tables  
and chairs was a figure alight with blue electric fire.  
  
"At last," the figure said. The bright electric field surrounding the  
adversary dissipated, and the lights in the room that were still functional  
returned to their normal flourescent glow. "At last you've come." The  
shape whirled, his long cape flapping behind him.  
  
Kenny Thompson's costume was a bit too big. It was powder blue,  
made from his bed sheets, the leggings stuffed into red rubber galoshes.   
The cape was orange and gold, a curtain taken from the Holiday Inn where  
Kenny's family had stayed in Orlando the previous summer. The  
crowning achievement, though, was the mask. Rubber and vinyl, Kenny  
had glued ball bearings to the piece. Residual electricity flowed between  
them, creating a glowing "T" from the boy's mouth to the top of his  
forehead.  
  
"I knew you would come to me, my sisters. My family!" Kenny  
smiled ecstatically at Rogue and Psylocke. The women only stared for a  
moment before Betsy finally spoke.  
  
"Who. Are. You?"  
  
"I?" the boy asked. The lights in the room flickered for a moment.   
Two snakes of electric current coiled out from broken light fixtures, and  
the boy raised his hands to meet them. The students huddled fearfully. "I  
am the elements gone awry!"   
  
Psylocke felt her hair stand on end again, and in her peripheral vision,  
she saw it do the same on every other head. The air in the cafeteria  
positively teemed with static electricity.  
  
"I am the prodigal returned!" He floated into the air as the lights gave  
up all of their power to the boy, rising on a carpet of current until he was  
at Rogue's level. "I AM THUNDerBolt!"   
  
The child grimaced when his voice cracked, his cheeks reddening in  
shame. He had worked for so long toward this moment . . .  
  
Rogue stared at the ridiculous looking boy with his wavering voice  
and snorted, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.   
  
***  
  
The hallway was narrow and black as coal. Eddies of white mist  
swirled in the damp, musky air despite the lack of breeze. Jean's shoulder  
brushed one wall, and as she stepped away, the opposite brushed the other.   
She had to walk sideways to proceed. Painfully, she turned her head to  
see the entrance. Though she left the door opened behind her, she was  
unsurprised to note that there was no light where the hall should be.  
  
She moved on, the passage becoming tighter and tighter. The stone  
wall pressed against her, constricting her breathing, yet still she pressed  
herself on in the blackness. Her breaths were more and more shallow, and  
she felt her head grow light before the moment of claustrophobic panic  
came. Jean tried to withdraw, but found that there was only rock the way  
she had come.   
  
Thrashing, a small noise escaped Jean's mouth, and she reached out  
with all her power but found nothing. The air was so warm, so wet that it  
felt like she was getting no breath at all. Her leading hand found an open  
space, and she pulled with all her strength but only came forward a few  
inches. She pulled again, and again, and finally she got her head into the  
open space. The air was cooler and she drank it in. She pulled one last  
time and freed herself from the chasm, falling forward to the floor.  
  
Jean laid there breathing deeply. Her cheek was raw where she had  
dragged it along the wall. So were her knuckles, scraped and bleeding  
from her desperate exit. She tried to get a sense of the space she was in -  
the floor was hardwood. She could detect the linseed oil used to clean,  
and the varnish beneath it. There was another smell. Timothy hay?  
  
"Hello?" she asked.  
  
"Hello, Jean Grey," answered a woman's voice. Mature and full, Jean  
thought it sounded like her mother. She shot to her feet looking for the  
source, high on the adrenaline that had dropped into her stomach.  
  
"Who's there!?!"  
  
"You're at a crossroads, Jean. We all are."  
  
"It's dark! I can't see you!" Jean cried. The voice seemed to come  
from nowhere at all, and when she reached out with her telepathy, all Jean  
found was her own confusion and fear.  
  
"Then make it light, you silly child," croaked another, older woman's  
voice.  
  
"I . . . I can't do that." To Jean, her own voice sounded childlike.   
Petulant.  
  
"Of course you can, my duck," said the old woman.  
  
"You've only forgotten how," said the younger one.  
  
"I have?" Jean heard herself ask. Then she began to remember, and in  
remembering, she began to *do*. She imagined the air in the room, its  
constituent parts: the molecules and atoms and quarks and whatzits and  
what-ifs. Then she thought about the ether that they all came from, that  
they would all return to again. Jean closed her eyes, not that she needed  
to in the blank darkness, and she imagined the darkness, and she imagined  
it faster, and brighter . . .  
  
"That's it."  
  
"Very good, child."  
  
Jean Grey opened her eyes to find herself standing in a small  
classroom. Two women were seated in large chairs in front of a  
blackboard staring at her in frank astonishment. The older one wore a  
brightly colored polyester pantsuit, flowers and frogs covering the smooth,  
white fabric. Her jaw worked as though she were chewing something, and  
her wide eyes floated behind thick bifocals.  
  
The other woman was a bit younger, in her forties perhaps. She was  
black, and dressed professionally in a dark suit. She might have been a  
lawyer or a doctor except for the large, white rabbit sitting quietly in her  
lap. The woman blinked at Jean and looked her up and down.  
  
"My, my," she said, indicating the skin tight green costume the  
redhead wore. She was petting the bunny's ears. "That just doesn't seem  
to fit you at *all*, does it now?"   
  
"No, indeed, Dolores," said the older woman. "It hasn't fit her in a  
long time."  
  
6  
  
Wolverine slammed into the support beam holding up the scaffold and  
it snapped it two. He looked up just in time to see the platform falling  
toward him, and he rolled quickly, barely dodging the piled of rocks and  
planks. There was a loud groan as the entire system of supports erected to  
hold the sandstone blocks in place shifted.   
  
The man in the yellow coat was as fast as he was strong, and he was a  
tougher opponent than Logan had expected. He scrambled through the  
dust and debris and just as he found his feet the man emerged from the  
cloud. Wolverine didn't get his hands up fast enough to block the gloved  
fist. It struck his temple, knocking him back to the ground. Though it  
would be virtually impossible to break his bones, the whiplash from the  
punch was enough to knock him loopy.  
  
"I told you, hoss!" The cowboy kicked him, knocking out Logan's  
wind. He tried to get his feet under him. "Around you or through you!"   
The absurd smile never left his giant mouth when he kicked Wolverine  
again, rolling him over. He crawled toward the scaffolding as the tall man  
walked a wide circle around him.  
  
"Boy? You don't think there's one of you every single time?" He  
kicked Logan in the ribs again, rolling him closer to the support structures.   
"There's always some damn fool wants to play gunslinger and mess up the  
works!" Again he kicked him, smacking Wolverine on the side of the head  
with his boot heel, but this time, Logan was ready.  
  
He caught the tall man's foot, jumped and rolled with it, taking the big  
man over. They were under another platform. Logan whirled to his feet  
just as the tall man rolled back and got to his. He popped his claws, but  
instead of charging his opponent, he snapped his eyes over to the  
scaffold's central support. The tall man's eyes followed his, and for the  
first time, the smile faltered on the stranger's face.  
  
"Whoops," Logan said. He sprang backwards, sweeping his claws  
through the wooden pole. It snapped with a loud crack and the platform  
fell inward from above as though it were a door on a massive hinge. The  
man in the yellow coat raised his arms before the whole house of cards  
came down.  
  
Logan rushed away from the collapse. The whole scaffolding  
structure seemed to fall in on itself, and the wall behind it could not take  
the added burden. A large section of the sandstone fell away, and the  
massive obsidian spoke above crumbled with it. For a moment,  
Wolverine was afraid that the whole room would collapse when the tower  
itself listed dangerously to one side and the whole world was blacked out  
with dirt and grit.  
  
Three of the four walls held, though the way they creaked and  
groaned, this might not be a permanent thing. Logan listened carefully for  
sounds for the other two regulators, but he could hear nothing in the dust  
filled room. He turned around to run for Juniper - the best bet would be to  
get out while the getting was good. The tall man in the yellow coat was  
impossibly standing right behind him. The smile had returned  
  
In the fraction of a second it took for Wolverine's claws to extend, the  
regulator had already struck him hard in the throat with the points of his  
bony fingers. He rocked back on his heels, coughing for breath when the  
man in the coat grabbed him by the neck. He lifted Logan off the ground  
so that they were eye to eye. "It's time to move on, son. Nobody can stop  
that." Logan barred his teeth at the tall man.  
  
"Let's find out." Logan reared his head back and slammed it forward  
between the tall man's eyes. He fell back, his hands flying to his face, and  
Wolverine dropped to the floor. He shook his head once, clearing it, then  
flew at the tall man.   
  
*Snikt!* The claws popped from the backs of his hands, and a smile  
bloomed on his own face. The tall stranger dropped his hands at his side,  
the smile still wide on his lips even as Logan was upon him. His eyes  
rolled back in his head as Wolverine thrust his claws forward, mind bright  
in anticipation of the satisfying pop of cartilage and bone. He crossed his  
hands in front of him in a wide arc, and found no resistence.  
  
For a shadow of a moment, the tall man in the yellow coat seemed to  
flicker, and Wolverine's claws passed through him as if he wasn't there at  
all. The lack of resistance threw him off balance, and his enemy lashed  
upwards with a knee. It caught Logan flush on the nose and he fell back.   
"Just like Kitty," he thought stupidly.   
  
Before he hit the ground, he found himself caught. The other two  
regulators held his arms fast. Wolverine thrashed against them, but found  
that their grips were like iron.   
  
"Yup. Time to move on. And time for us to move on, too." The  
leader turned around and went to stand over the regulator in the green coat  
whose skull Logan had crushed first of all. "This one oughta do fine," the  
man in yellow called jovially in his West Texas drawl.   
  
As Logan tried fruitlessly to escape the grip of the other two, the tall  
man leaned down to his fallen colleague and seemed to do nothing more  
than whisper in his ear. Then he stood and walked to Juniper. She was  
still unconscious, so he reached down and easily picked her up and threw  
her over his bony shoulder.  
  
"If you harm her . . ."   
  
"Hell, boy. We seem to've harm her already," said the tall man in the  
yellow coat. His two buddies laughed on either side of Logan, a  
wheezing, deathly sound. "But don't you worry. She'll be real safe with  
me for the ride home." The tall man in the yellow coat loped to the  
remaining scaffold and began to climb the long network of ladders up to  
the surface.  
  
"You're a dead man!" Wolverine roared.  
  
"Maybe so, old hoss! I'd be lookin' after my own self if I was you!"  
He continued to climb.  
  
Logan turned back to the dead man in the green coat and found him  
distinctly animated. His forehead was crushed and hung open, a vile,  
gelatinous gel leaking steadily. The reedy, tall thing lurched toward  
where the cowboys held Logan as though it were a marionette being  
pulled by invisible strings. The walls groaned, and another of the great  
spokes shattered and fell to the floor. The choking dust glittered despite  
the darkness. The light from the broken tower was gaining intensity.  
  
"Help!" Juniper screamed from the catwalks above. Logan looked  
over his shoulder to find his friend struggling with the tall man as he  
climbed the precarious structure. The scaffolding was swaying under  
their weight, and the whole room might cave in at any moment.  
  
He turned back to find the anorexic, shambling thing was almost upon  
him. More of the black, syrupy fluid was leaking from the fissure  
bisecting his face, and there was a noise like a zipper issuing from the  
wound. It was spreading, growing, widening. Logan grimaced as the  
thing approaching him began to convulse, but the two regulators held fast.   
  
  
The dead man stopped before Wolverine and shuddered spastically,  
his arms dangling limply. A loud pop came from deep in the rotting  
thing's innards, and a gout of the viscous matter spilled out onto the floor  
with a wet plop. The inhuman smile that all of the regulators wore was  
still in evidence, and it was expanding. Logan stopped struggling, staring  
at the beast is sheer horror. He went slack between his captors, but they  
adjusted, shifting to bear his weight.  
  
The smile grew so wide that it seemed some invisible force was  
pulling the regulator's cheeks. Then his mouth began to open, steel teeth  
glinting in the impossible light. There was an explosion of sound as the  
south wall gave up its efforts and collapsed, a tidal wave of dust and  
debris billowing in from behind the yawning creature.   
  
Even with the din of noise, Logan could hear the wet noises of the  
liquid hitting the sandstone floor. The creature began issuing a sound, a  
keen, screeching noise as its body shuddered violently. The regulator's  
cheeks split, the flesh tearing audibly. Wolverine gritted his teeth, the  
dust so thick he could barely see the creature as it reared back, preparing  
to strike. At last, there was a crack as the beast's jaw distended and its  
inhuman screaming reached a crescendo. It lanced down at its captive  
prey, meaning to take his head.  
  
Hanging limply, Wolverine abruptly pulled one of the regulators with  
all his might. The whole chain of men shifted, and the man Logan pulled  
was in the path of the screeching beast. It bit into his head, lifting him off  
the ground and shaking him to and fro like a rabid dog.   
  
The tall stranger still holding Logan growled and reared back to hit him  
when the smaller man popped his claws. He punched forward at the tall  
man when the ground heaved beneath his feet. The whole room shook  
violently when the south wall shifted.   
  
The regulator glared at Logan, then rolled back his eyes. "Tak!" he  
said. At once, both the regulators and their monstrous, reanimated  
companion were gone. Vanished as though they were never there.  
  
Wolverine gaped at where his enemies had been standing, then he  
jumped to his feet and looked up despite the dust. He couldn't see his  
friend or the man in the yellow coat, and for all he knew they could be  
gone as well. Still, he had to try and get out either way. He rushed across  
the chamber and leapt to climb the crumbling scaffold.   
  
7  
  
"The mutant menace has arrived in America's schools. This is  
Charles Fillman live at Westchester Consolidated . . ." Rose walked out  
of earshot from the reporter doing his stand up on the crowded football  
field. She frowned, unconsciously rubbing her belly as he moved. How  
strange it was that less than an hour before she had been sitting two tables  
over from Fillman having lunch with a young woman who was now part  
of the menace the pretentious man was warning people against.  
  
Rose strolled among the various news agencies. The TV people were  
the annoying ones. Technical personnel ran around chaotically, stringing  
cable behind them, yelling and screaming in what might have been a life  
or death quest for the best field position or the best backdrop or whatever  
the hell it was. Rose far preferred hanging around with the print guys.   
They clustered around their cars, talking amongst themselves. In some  
ways it seemed as though the photographers and writers used emergencies  
of all stripes as an excuse to socialize and gossip.  
  
One of the technicians almost knocked her over as he ran past.   
"Sorry," he called.  
  
"What's going on?"  
  
"It's the feds," the young man called. He backpedaled for a moment,  
moving quickly. "They're about to move!" He bolted off to his  
destination.  
  
"Shit," she cursed under her breath. Rose paced for a moment, then  
she ran across the field, making for the entrance to the press area, the  
wind whipping her red hair into her face. Damned if she couldn't find a  
way to get closer to that school. Just as she got to the entrance, the police  
officer on guard stepped out to block her from leaving. Before he said a  
word, though, he looked beyond her.  
  
"Excuse me?" called a gravelly voice behind her.  
  
Rose turned to see a tall, good-looking man jogging up to her. He had  
blond hair, receding slightly above a well-lined forehead. A badge hung  
from his suit pocket, and though Rose didn't know one agency from  
another, this guy didn't look local. The guard looked questioningly from  
Rose to the man behind her, and she used the opportunity to walk quickly  
past.  
  
"It's fine," he said, hurrying to catch up with Rose. "Mrs. Summers?"   
he called. Just outside the entrance the man put his hand on her shoulder,  
and she turned around, brushing the hair out of her face. He looked down  
into her eyes for a moment, the crease deepening between his eyes.  
  
"I apologize," he said. "I must have you confused with somebody  
else."  
  
"No problem," Rose said. She looked back at the officer standing by  
the entrance. "Have a nice day." She smiled at the earnest man in the  
dark suit, then turned to hurry up the hill to the school. The man watched  
her walk away with his hands in his pockets.  
  
***  
  
The boy paced maniacally atop the mound of broken rubbish, the king  
of nothing hill. Rogue and Psylocke stood silently listening as he ranted.   
The story was one they had heard many times before in one variation or  
another. Parents who were afraid and repulsed. Peers who reviled and  
tortured. What was different about this child was the pain that every blow  
had inflicted upon him. He built none of the emotional armor that most  
mutants seemed to instinctually develop. Instead, every clipping insult  
had hardened to a single-minded hatred. What he did not recognize was  
that the lion's share was reserved for himself.  
  
Psylocke began radiating a sense of calm to Kenny. She tried to  
reassure him as subtly as she could, to break down the layer of hatred with  
which the boy viewed everything and allow him to be a child again. She  
knew she might have to subdue him or worse. This child was powerful  
and completely out of control. He had already killed twice.  
  
"I didn't know! I didn't know who to talk to or what to do! The only  
numbers that the TV ever tells you are ones to report us to the  
authorities!" He turned to one of the cowering students. "Bet you wish  
you called now, huh!?!" The lights dimmed for a moment, and Psylocke  
nearly moved, but the boy only turned back to her and Rogue.  
  
"Do you know what I mean? Magneto doesn't have a fucking help  
line for young muties! I had to do something to bring you to me. I *had*  
to." The boy stopped pacing, and Rogue thought she might have seen  
tears welling in his eyes. "You see that don't you?"  
  
"Of course we do, Thunderbolt. But we're here now," Betsy Braddock  
said softly. "Maybe you ought to let the other children go."  
  
"NO!" Kenny started pacing again. Back and forth, back and forth,  
the tables and chairs shifting beneath him. "No! You don't understand  
what they've done to me. They sit around and talk about me all the time!  
They whisper about me in the faculty meetings! They tell lies about me!  
Lies! LIES!"  
  
Psylocke looked at Rogue for a moment, then turned back to Kenny.   
She had been in his mind. She saw the monstrous bee hives with their  
stinging residents buzzing through every thought, coloring everything the  
boy saw a violent red. It only took a moment of looking at the world  
through the wrongness of his eyes before she recognized the obvious: this  
was not just an angry emergent mutant they were dealing with - this boy  
was a paranoid schizophrenic. There were all manners of spiders and  
scorpions dancing in the child's psyche, and they all bit. The other kids  
had been mean, to be sure. There was nothing as extreme as the cruelty of  
some children. But the real devils in this boy's mind were all his own.   
  
Maintaining her alert demeanor, Betsy began breathing deeply.   
Though her eyes were open, she left partly left herself to wage a battle  
with the devils inside the boy. The only way she could visualize it,  
absurdly enough, was as an arcade game she had played once at  
Southampton: Whack-A-Mole. Small creatures with sharp teeth bounced  
out of their small caverns, and each time they did, Betsy swung a heavy  
mallet through the air to bash them back again. The whisperers were  
many in the boy's mind, though, and they kept hopping up faster than  
Braddock could knock them down.  
  
"I know how you feel," said Rogue emphatically. "Little bastards  
where I went to school just never let up."  
  
"Yeah. The just tear us down every day. It's like that's all they were  
born to do! That's why we have to get them back and . . ."  
  
In Kenny's mind, Psylocke made a breakthrough. Perhaps she could  
not stop the infinite number of torturous little devils with her own two  
hands, but there were other ways. Betsy imagined herself as the Indian  
goddess, Shiva, her six arms more than adequate for tamping the vicious  
reptilian biters down. At last, the devils were silenced.  
  
"Naw," Rogue responded. "If you go and get even with the people  
beating you down, you become just like 'em. Trust me, kid. I know."  
  
With his mind quiet, the boy listened to the woman with the stripe in  
her hair. He sat down atop his mountain, and the two beautiful mutants  
continued to speak to him in soft, reassuring voices. Despite himself,  
Kenny began to cry as they moved closer.  
  
Bruce Moyers watched the freaky little bastard sit down from his place  
on the floor. The two weird looking girls looked scared of him - one  
could fly and the other had a sword, but they hadn't done shit even though  
Kenny had smoked Coach Vogler. Chicks just couldn't handle  
emergencies.  
  
The boy frowned, as he often did when he was thinking. When that  
kid went crazy with a gun in Oregon, one of the guys from the wrestling  
team took his scrawny ass down. Yeah. That dude became, like, a  
national hero. Bruce stood up, and neither Kenny nor the chicks seemed  
to notice. He grinned and looked down at his teammates. Terry Sullivan  
motioned desperately for him to get down again, but that was typical.   
Terry was a chickenshit on the court, too.  
  
Bruce charged. He bolted across the room as fast as his athletic legs  
would carry him, quickly climbing the pile of chairs. It's too bad there  
weren't cameras in the dining hall, because this could go on his college  
reel like the sacks he'd perpetrated during football season.   
  
"No!" Bruce thought. Oddly, the thought sounded like a girl with an  
English accent. The freaky little kid was wouldn't even turn around  
before Bruce tackled him. In those final moments, a smile appeared at the  
corners of Bruce's lips. This would be legendary. He imagined what he  
would say to Katie Couric the next morning. He considered how nice her  
legs were.  
  
It was the last thing he ever thought.  
  
***  
  
Cyclops descended the wide stairs into the main hallway. He looked  
down the corridor, awash in the pink haze through which he'd viewed the  
world since joining Xavier. Sparks blew from nearly every fixture, falling  
to the floor and scattering as the bright jewels burned out. The heat from  
one open fuse had burned the fire-retardant American flag decorating the  
wall. The nylon was melting, and a trail of red, white and blue sludge  
trailed viscously down over the lockers. Scott stepped into the hall,  
walking right down the middle.  
  
His step was even and calm. Regardless of Psylocke's stricken  
telepathic call, there was no need to panic. If he had learned anything  
over the years, it was that hurrying meant a job done poorly. Patience was  
where victory laid. So Summers moved down the hall at a prudent pace,  
neither hurried nor laconic.  
  
He was naturally aware of the pale, frightened faces that peeked at  
him from classroom doorways and alcoves. They were students or  
teachers seeking a savior from their predicament, fearful and awestruck by  
the man in the blue tights. He had no time to smile heroically and  
reassure them - there was work to be done. Besides, if his time at the  
orphanage showed him anything, it was that these huddled fearful lambs  
could be lions when there was someone different in their midst.  
  
Rounding the corner that led to the dining hall, Scott picked up his  
pace. The fire doors gaped open, and screaming issued from within.   
Bright flashes of blue illumination sparked like flashbulbs, accompanied  
by the loud cracking of open current. Smoke was thick on the air, making  
anything in the room difficult to discern beyond the fetid smell of burning  
hair. The screaming continued as he stepped across the threshold. The  
time had come for Cyclops to save the day.  
  
8  
  
"Well, hey there, Red. You decide to come and spend a little time  
with us old folks?" Jean blinked. She still couldn't get a telepathic  
reading on the two women sitting in front of her, but everything in the  
room seemed perfectly benign.  
  
"Who are you?" she asked. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"Questions, questions," grumbled the older woman, smoothing a  
crease in the leg of her pantsuit. Her hand shook slightly. "And always  
the wrong ones." Her friend shot her a disapproving look.   
  
"I am Dolores Pelton," replied the black woman with a wide smile.   
"I'm the guidance counselor here. And grumpy over there is Mrs. Lynch."   
Dolores pet the rabbit on her lap and leaned forward, affecting an entre  
nous whisper to Jean. "She teaches math - no social skills. As to why  
we're here . . ."  
  
"Hush, you. A question a piece. That's the arrangement," Mrs.  
Lynch turned to look at Jean. Despite the fact that she was sitting down  
while the younger woman stood, she somehow managed to look down on  
Jean over the tops of her granny glasses. "We are here because with  
everything going on, this would appear to be the safest place to be,  
granddaughter."  
  
Jean thought for a moment. She had been in strange hall and heard  
voices. But this was the high school. She and Scott and the others had  
come here to save an emergent mutant on some kind of rampage when she  
became lost and . . .  
  
"Are you all right, sapling?" asked the elderly math teacher.  
  
"Perhaps you ought to sit down?" asked the younger woman. Jean  
hadn't noticed the chair behind her before, but she was grateful it was  
there. She plunked down heavily, adjusting the gold sash around her  
waist. The lights flickered, and Jean shut her eyes for a moment, rubbing  
them with her palms. The three women sat in a small triangle: an old  
teacher, a matronly guidance counselor and Jean Grey-Summers wearing  
the vestments of a goddess. She lowered her hands and asked the only  
question that came to her tired mind.  
  
"Who's your friend, Dolores?"  
  
"Just Del, child," she said. She wiggled the ears on the large bunny,  
who clicked her teeth approvingly. "This here's Clarissa."  
  
"Where's her cage, Del? Aren't you worried that she might get  
away?" Dolores laughed at the question.  
  
"Goodness, no, child! Clarissa can't get away because she doesn't  
belong to anyone." She looked at Jean with an eyebrow raised. "She  
comes and goes as she pleases, moving as Destiny guides. Here."  
  
"But . . ." Del picked Clarissa up and plunked her down on Jean's lap.   
The heavy creature looked up at the redhead and wiggled her nose  
impatiently. Jean tentatively began petting her ears, and the lupine settled  
heavily in on her lap.  
  
"Clarissa? Piff!" grunted Mrs. Lynch. "Bunnies ought to be  
'Hoppies' or 'Buttons!' What kind of name is 'Clarissa' for a rabbit like  
this?" The rabbit turned around in Jean's lap and jutted her head forward  
at Mrs. Lynch. She grunted before settling back in to be pet.  
  
"We had a rabbit when I was a little girl," Jean said. "My dad named  
it 'Dutch,' after President Reagan."  
  
"Mm," said Mrs. Lynch. "Oh, dear, yes. Yes, indeedy. That Ronald  
Reagan sure was a good-looking man."  
  
"He's still alive, Mrs. Lynch."  
  
"Yes, Del. Yes, I suppose he is. But he sure is in a bad way. That's a  
terrible disease he has." She turned to Jean. "Forgetting everything about  
who you are and where you come from. It's very like death, a life like  
that. Don't you think, my duck?"   
  
"Yeah. That's a tough road," she said. On her lap, the rabbit's  
warmth was comforting. "I don't even like to think about it."  
  
"Of course you don't, child. No one likes to think about what they've  
lost." The lights flickered again, then they gave up. It took Jean's eyes a  
moment to adjust, but she found that she could still see her companions,  
their eyes especially.  
  
"We have a friend with the Forgetting," said one of the ladies. "She  
was lost to it."  
  
"We used to be inseparable, we three," said the other.  
  
"Like we three were one," they said together, then they tittered  
girlishly. "Jinx."  
  
"You should probably get to your friends."  
  
"Time is running short."  
  
Clarissa jumped from Jean's lap, and she found herself saddened that  
the time had come to leave. She moved to cross the room, somehow  
aware of the door's location despite the darkness.  
  
"I wish I didn't have to go," she heard herself say as she opened the  
door. The school hallway beyond was filled with smoke, and she smelled  
the overpowering scents of ozone, melting plastic and cleaning supplies.   
Her telepathic awareness flooded in, and she could hear Betsy's  
desperation.  
  
"Yes, child, we do seem to get along well. I know you'll fill in that  
outfit someday," said Mrs. Lynch helpfully.  
  
"Too bad about the questions, though."  
  
"They *do* always ask the wrong ones. We might have given you  
different answers." Jean turned back to the dark room, and the voices that  
bloomed from its depths. "We might have warned you about the Crimson  
King and his earthly servant."  
  
"And the child, and the choice."  
  
"But you still have responsibilities, my duck . . ."  
  
" . . . my daughter . . ."  
  
" . . . my sister . . ."  
  
Jean felt along the wall inside the doorway until her hand found the  
light switch. She flipped it up and gasped. A janitor's closet hung open  
before her, filled with mops and brooms, bleach and linseed oil. She  
gaped for a moment, then turned around and ran for her friends.  
  
9  
  
The snow began to fall in earnest, and it couldn't have come at a  
better time from Kitty's perspective. The naked thicket of trees separating  
the school from the athletic field provided little cover, but the young  
woman had skills in the area of stealth. She moved cautiously across the  
open space when she heard the approach of the SWAT reconnaissance  
team. They moved with all the stealth and subtlety of a herd of elephants.  
  
If one had been looking right at her, they would have sworn that Kitty  
simple vanished into the white ground. In fact, she was only using one of  
the more economical tricks she had learned in Japan when she and Logan  
had their little vacation. Sweet sixteen, indeed.  
  
The cops passed so close that Kitty could have plucked the earpiece  
out of one of their ears and replaced marching orders with softly spoken  
words had she wanted. They stood for a moment, whispering back and  
forth about the best point of entry, and how the feds always screwed  
things up, and how they had to get into the cafeteria unnoticed.   
  
"Maybe we could just blow the wall," said one of the goons, pointing  
to the edifice directly in front of him.  
  
"And kill half the hostages? Maybe the feebs oughta look at your  
resume," shot back another. "Let's hit that roof."   
  
The men ran off, and Kitty became noticeable again. She watched  
them lumber into the white, sticking out like sore thumbs in their  
hackneyed attempt at stealth. The wind kicked up, and for a moment the  
great hulk of the school vanished in the swirling whirlwinds of dry snow.   
Perfect.  
  
Kitty darted across the open space in a sprint that would have turned  
many a track & field runner green with envy. She ended with her back  
against the wall the cop had been pointing to. Kitty looked about once  
more, then turned around and stepped through the wall.  
  
The girl hiding under the table opened her mouth to scream when  
Kitty appeared before her in the darkness. The room flashed and pulsed  
like some hellish discotheque complete with strobes and smoke machines  
and a back beat composed of the screeching fire alarm. Before a sound  
could escape the girl's lips, Kitty put her hand over the frightened child's  
mouth with a hollow slap. She stared with wide eyes as Kitty extended  
the index finger on her other hand and held it to her own lips.  
  
"Shh." She was about to ask the girl where the enemy was when she  
head a familiar voice scream. It was Psylocke, and she was in pain.  
  
Kitty forgot the girl and bolted to her feet, ready for action. Just as she  
rushed forward a hand grabbed her by the scruff of her jacket collar and  
she nearly lost her footing. Without thinking, she spun around, grabbing  
the restraining arm and twisting it at the same moment she struck with the  
other.  
  
Her streaking fist only found empty air. Cyclops leaned out of a deep  
shadow and shook his head slightly.  
  
"Not yet," he whispered. Betsy screamed again.  
  
***  
  
When the boy jumped at Kenny Thompson, Psylocke tried to stop him  
a moment too late. She had been so involved in calming the boy's  
fragmenting mind that she lost the rest of the room - she never saw Bruce  
Moyers' suicidal heroics coming. The big kid had been right in his  
imagination: the hit was tremendous. He knocked Kenny from the top of  
the table and they tumbled to the floor, the strange house of cards  
constructed by tables and chairs collapsing with them. At once, every  
light in the room went out, every open circuit ceased raining sparks.  
  
"No!" Rogue flew down as quickly as she could, but the pile had  
already begun to shake as though the earth tremored.   
  
"Brrrrrrrrrrr . . ." Bruce Moyers screamed. It was as though the poor  
soul's vocal cords were convulsing. Psylocke and Rogue flung  
themselves at the debris, pulling the flotsam desperately out of the way.   
At once, the whole pile exploded. Betsy found herself flying backwards  
through the air, but she turned gracefully and landed on her feet.  
  
Rogue easily batted the table streaking in her direction away, but this  
didn't save her eyes. For a moment, it was only Kenny standing  
awkwardly with his epileptic attacker on his back, a low level of static  
current coursing through him. The small boy's nose was bleeding, and his  
mask had been knocked off. He looked over at Psylocke and his face  
twisted in a paroxysm of grief and rage.   
  
He screamed, and in that instant, Kenny Thompson became a white-  
hot sun burning brightly in the middle of the room. The student screamed,  
and those who were looking directly at their captor during that terrible  
moment didn't completely recover their eyesight for days. Rogue  
shielded her face against the light, against the nauseating explosion of  
burning flesh and clothes and the heat from the boy as he turned Bruce  
Moyers to dust.  
  
Psylocke fell backwards, sitting awkwardly on the floor. As suddenly  
as it had come, the boy's inner fire dissipated, and he stood naked in the  
pile of melted debris. Betsy couldn't perceive it, though - all she could  
see was white.  
  
"You were in it with him!" screamed the boy. Tears streaked down  
his face as he stepped out of the pile. "I waited for you my whole life and  
you are JUST LIKE THEM!"  
  
"No. No, Kenneth," Betsy said. She crawled backwards, trying to get  
to her feet. She didn't want to attack the boy. She thought she could still  
save him. "We're here to help you."  
  
"I'm not the one who needs help anymore," he said quietly. The  
naked boy raised his hands in front of the blind woman, and Rogue knew  
what was coming. She flitted through the air to her friend.  
  
On the ceiling, the light fixtures all exploded at once, and an electric  
fire rained down upon Elizabeth Braddock. She screamed, trying  
desperately to lash out with her telepathy, but the currents in her own  
brain became scrambled. Rogue covered her friend, getting between she  
and the deadly lightening. It did not occur to her that her invulnerability  
did not stop the current from flowing over her and into Psylocke.  
  
Betsy screamed again, convulsing wildly. Throughout Westchester  
County, hundreds of people suddenly suffered intense migraines. Their  
noses bled with a sudden burst, and nobody could account for the  
debilitating symptoms.  
  
The electric blasts stopped, and Betsy continued to shake in Rogue's  
arms. Rogue thought that her forehead was going to explode when she  
felt an indelible rage bloom within her. She turned to the boy, blood  
flowing from her nose down over her teeth. The hell with saving him.   
Kenny saw the look on the woman's face and knew his static hadn't  
harmed her in the least.   
  
Just as Rogue lifted off of Psylocke, the child adapted his attack. He  
looked to the ceiling and visualized the wires that cris-crossed within it.   
At once, he imagined them coursing with more current than they could  
handle, boiling over with blue luminescence. As Kenny Thompson  
daydreamed, so reality became. The ceiling exploded, forcing Rogue to  
protect Psylocke as the floor above tumbled down into the dining hall with  
a loud crash.  
  
The naked child looked upon his work, the coiled voices in his mind  
quelling at last. He stepped back slowly from the destruction. Brownish  
water rained from the broken pipes and a thick cloud of dust choked him.   
He heard coughing around the room and saw the other students looking at  
him in horror. For a moment, Kenny thought he must have been  
dreaming. He had often dreamed about being naked in front of a  
classroom, the other students laughing hysterically. They were not  
laughing now. He looked back at the rubble. How many others were  
buried there? What had he done?  
  
"Now, Shadowcat!"  
  
Kenny turned to the sound of the voice. A pretty girl with short hair  
ran at him from the dust cloud. He raised his hands, coursing with current  
again when she leapt forward. Despite his guilt, he stood ready to hold  
her in an electric embrace. The woman only passed through him like a  
ghost. Kenny shook his head and turned to look at the wraith when he  
heard someone else approaching.  
  
The man was tall and big, dressed entirely in blue. He had a single,  
red eye, and a grimace on his angry face - a demon then, just as he had  
been warned. Kenny tried to lash out with his power, but found that the  
electric snakes that lived in his head did not respond. They slumbered  
now when they were finally needed. The man walked deliberately toward  
Kenny, neither hurried nor laconic. He held something in his hand.  
  
10  
  
Logan sprinted across the buckling floor. The whole room seemed to  
be turning in on itself, contracting and crumbling to oblivion. This was  
not merely a structural failure brought about by the collapse of some  
scaffolding. This was more like suicide.  
  
Just as he passed the listing tower that glowed in the center of the  
room, the sound of stone grating against stone ripped through the air and  
Wolverine looked up. The great obsidian monolith cracked along its base  
and teetered for a terrible moment. Logan dived forward just as it  
collapsed completely, ripping the remaining stone spokes from the wall  
above.  
  
The tower slammed into the sandstone wall, knocking a huge chunk to  
the floor. Logan scrambled forward to avoid it and found that things were  
only going from bad to worse. One of the spokes still moored to the wall  
fell inward from its umbilical connection to the tower and there was no  
time to move from the deadly black leviathan.  
  
With reflexes honed by years of battle experience, Wolverine popped  
his claws and lashed out at the same time as rolling forward in apparent  
confrontation of the seven-ton stone. The adamantium blades protruding  
from the backs of his hands sliced easily through the rock. They knocked  
a chunk away just large enough for Logan to roll underneath. He whirled  
to his feet when the tower itself shattered like glass.  
  
Heavy black chunks fell everywhere, and Wolverine had to move to  
get some distance between him and the chaos. He ran at one of the large  
pieces of black stone and leapt upon it, using the height to boost his jump  
away from the collapsing tower. His legs acting as pistons, he landed  
yards away, but immediately had to spring into action again.   
  
He landed heavily on the floor, coughing from the reflective black  
dust the collapsing tower and thrown into the air like death-knell confetti.   
The floor cracked, opening a deep fissure, and Logan tried to move away  
from it but did not roll quickly enough. He tumbled over the edge and  
began to fall into the impossible oblivion below. He caught the edge of  
the crack with the tips of his fingers and managed to hold on despite the  
tossing earth, but he could find no traction.   
  
Releasing one hand, Logan thrust his other fist against the wall and  
launched his claws into the rock. They found purchase, and he began to  
pull himself back up to the floor above when he heard a deep, mechanical  
noise beneath him. Steel worked on steel in rhythmic syncopations.   
Gritting his teeth, Logan looked into the abyss beneath him and saw a  
glint in the darkness. Gears were working in the distance beneath him,  
spinning and whirring like the guts of a watch.  
  
"The hell?" he whispered beneath the cacophony. It wasn't possible.   
The Library of Echoes was more than two thousand years old, and the  
ancient Egyptians never . . .  
  
But this wasn't the time to ruminate. The room shook terribly, and  
Logan raised himself back onto the wobbling floor. The thick dust made  
breathing hard and seeing harder. Indeed, the air was a reflective haze of  
lung tearing shards, but Logan could still sense the wall above him  
coming down. Without seeing it the exit, Logan still knew where he had  
to be and he sprinted forward as fast as his legs would carry him, careful  
to avoid the many fissures in the broken floor.   
  
He came to the great broken piece that had been the apex of the tower  
and wrestled his way up on top of it. The dust was too thick to see the last  
sound wall, so Logan would have to make a leap of faith. He moved as  
far back as he could on the black stone, hopped once, priming his legs,  
then ran forward. At the last moment before falling from the edge, he  
leapt forward, reaching forward with his hands and coming as close to a  
prayer as he had in years. He thought he would tumble painfully to the  
floor when the scaffold reared up out of the whirlwind. Wolverine  
gripped it desperately, the momentum kicking his legs forward. He swung  
all the way around the support beam he grabbed and flipped up to the  
platform above, landing hard on his knees.  
  
Logan grimaced and looked above him. Faintly, he could just make  
out the moon fifty feet above. The scaffolding shook wildly, and one look  
told him that it wouldn't be long before the other collapsing walls would  
knock his escape route to the floor. He began to climb, choosing frenetic  
speed over calculated safety. Below him, the Library of Echoes began to  
turn inward on itself.  
  
***  
  
Jean heard the girl's screams with her mind long before hearing them  
with her ears. It was the terrified patter of her feet running on the tile  
floor that struck the redhead though. Her panic-stricken footsteps echoed  
down the long corridor, all the way to where Jean stepped out of the  
stairwell. From the sound of it, the child had lost a shoe somewhere, but  
was too frightened to either find it or take the other one off. Instead, even  
before the girl rounded the corner, before Jean ever saw her she heard the  
girl approaching and there was something faintly grotesque about the  
sound rippling off the wet floor: click-slap! click-slap! click-slap! Above  
the footsteps, the screaming was ceaseless and piercing.  
  
Raising her psychic defenses, Jean telepathically masked herself from  
the approaching girl. She finally came around the bend, and was so single  
minded in her need to escape that Jean could have danced in the hall and  
the child might not have noticed. Her clothes were wet, covered by a  
sheen of gray dust and brownish crud. Her eyes were racoon stained with  
tears, dark streaks of eyeliner running down her cheeks. Jean found  
herself wondering when children began wearing makeup nowadays.  
  
"You really are getting out of touch, Jean," she thought. She tried to  
scan the child's mind as she bolted past, but the disconnected images  
shared more with the strange mosaic of nightmares than with the solid  
coherency of the real world. Electric fire and earthquakes and cold-  
blooded murder. As soon as the girl hit the stairwell, another pair of kids  
ran around the corner, followed by two others supporting a third, injured  
one between them. They all tried to move with the most speed their legs  
could carry them with. When she heard the rumble of feet and screaming  
as more and more kids poured into the hall, a hundred or more. Jean  
thought of stampedes.  
  
Many of the kids were covered in cuts and scratches, and all of them  
were soaked through and through. Jean still felt the sense of dislocation  
she had on the floor below, when she sat with the   
*witches*  
  
school teachers. The scene unfolded before her as though it were some  
second rate metal video on MTV, the air filled with smoke as high school  
students ran in slow motion. She exerted just enough control over the  
herd that they avoided running into her as she walked slowly down the  
hall in the opposite direction, tasting their thoughts, rich with adrenaline  
and fear. The air was filled with screaming and low moans of terror and  
pain. Virgil might have guided Jean through this space.  
  
An injured child fell in the crush, twisting his ankle badly. Two more  
tripped heavily over him. In the crunch of bodies the boy would quickly  
be trampled. Jean reached down and helped the frightened boy to his feet.   
In later years, after a great deal of therapy, Steve Longeram would  
remember the beautiful face of the redheaded woman appearing out of the  
smoke. He would remember the soft touch of her hand, and the ease with  
which she pulled him to his feet. He would tell his wife and children that  
he had met his guardian angel that day, and that she had the saddest eyes.  
  
Jean protected the boy as he made his way down the hall into the  
stairs. The crowd, more than a hundred fifty frightened teachers and  
students, simply parted around the woman in green. They all saw her  
even if their waking minds were blinded to the fact. They were all aware  
of her on some preconscious level. Many of them dreamed of her, and  
when she abruptly left their dreaming landscape some time later, these  
survivors of the Mutant Massacre in Westchester woke the next morning  
to find their pillows streaked with tears. This was not an unusual  
occurrence for them on the whole, so they thought little of it.  
  
The crowd thinned, only the most critically injured or pathologically  
calm limped down the hall now, full throated screaming giving way to the  
dull moans of the weak or the wounded. Jean turned around and  
continued, the air pregnant with the stench of destiny. Though she had  
faced worse, far worse, she was frightened, butterflies fluttering lightly  
against the walls of her stomach. She rounded the corner and looked upon  
the destruction at the end of the hall.  
  
A river of brownish sludge slowly flowed down the hall, pouring from  
the burst pipes. It overtook Jean's feet and she worried for a moment  
before she finally made the connection - all of the electrical discharges  
had ceased. It seemed that whatever had been causing the spark showers  
and massive blowouts of power had given up.   
  
The hallway seemed to have folded in on itself at the end, the ceiling  
falling down in a raft of cheap sheet rock and grout. "Asbestos, too," Jean  
thought. The doors to the cafeteria hung askew, and there was so much  
dust, so much rubble and debris that she couldn't make anything out  
beyond the threshold.  
  
Jean moved down the hall with a sense of trepidation. She reached  
out to Psylocke, but all she could find was a confused montage of imagery  
that she recognized immediately. There had been many times over the  
years that she encountered minds in Betsy's current state - the woman was  
in shock.   
  
There was more, though. Jean caught flashes of panic from Rogue.   
She felt the same from Kitty, mingled with horrified disbelief. A single  
phrase repeated itself time and time again, blaring in a terrified loop.   
"Stopitstopitstopitstopit!" There was something else beneath the  
women's dissonant confusion. Something bleaker that Jean recognized  
but couldn't put her finger on. A smell? A sound?  
  
As her feet splashed in the deepening muck, she could not have told  
you why she was so hesitant to call out to Cyclops. To Scott. To her  
husband. All she might have been able to articulate was the strange sense  
of foreboding the thought of touching his mind gave her, and how that  
fear escalated the more she thought of it. Jean was brave, though. She  
reached for him as she arrived outside the door.  
  
THWACK! The noise came from the swirling, smoky darkness in the  
room. A wet, meaty noise sharp enough to overtake the hiss of flowing  
water and sirens and alarms.  
  
Scott's consciousness resounded with the same patterns as it always  
did recently. Love for Jean, fidelity to the Dream, seriousness of purpose  
and constancy of resolve. Her husband's mind was patterned and  
consistent, organized so neatly that it might have been designed. There  
was something else underneath this time, though. Something physical. A  
smell was heavy in her husband's nose, coppery and thick. Blood.  
  
THWACK! This time, she felt the blow through Scott's mind. A  
vibration deep in his (her) hands and wrists, radiating all the way up her  
arms. As though awakened from a dream, Jean inhaled sharply. Was he  
under attack and bleeding? He didn't seem to be in pain, but everything  
pointed toward . . .  
  
Jean made the decision not to follow that path of reasoning. The  
evidence led in a direction she did not wish to acknowledge. Instead, she  
looked at the pile of flotsam blocking her path. She could imagine how  
difficult it had been for the frightened students to traverse the broken  
mound. She thought she saw a foot extending from underneath the rubble,  
and decided that she had neither the time nor the inclination to navigate  
the broken access to the dining hall.  
  
She made a subtle gesture of parting, her left hand sweeping in front  
of her, and the building rumbled to its very bowels. The air trembled with  
the sound of stone against stone, of steel against steel, and the debris  
parted like the sea before Moses. It slammed into either wall, opening the  
cafeteria to entry. Beneath the noise, she could hear Kitty screaming.   
Jean ran into the room.  
  
***  
  
A hunk of sandstone plunged from the wall, tumbling across the floor  
and slamming into the base of the scaffold. Wolverine looped his arm  
around a support and locked his hands together. The structure listed  
harshly, and for a moment Logan thought ridiculously of a mechanical  
bull he had ridden once in Calgary. He gritted his teeth together, briefly  
sure that it would tumble to the ground below, but the Egyptians had done  
their work well. The scaffold folded against itself and the opposite wall.   
Logan looked up - there was still a chance if he moved fast.  
  
He spun around on the pole as he kicked his feet underneath him.  
When he was on the outside of the erector set, he reached up to grab the  
platform above and pulled himself up. Twenty feet to go. Maybe less.  
  
The room oscillated badly, and Wolverine realized that something  
more was at work here than the loss of a support. It was as though the  
Library of Echoes was attempting to consume itself.   
  
He stood on the platform and began to reach up to the next when the  
support beneath him snapped and fell on the other side. The plank fell  
diagonally, and Logan toppled forward, sliding on his belly to the abyss  
below. Adamantium or not, a fall from this height to the stone and bronze  
would not feel good. He gripped the edge as momentum carried his body  
past, crying out when he rolled. His shoulder nearly separated, and he  
could feel the muscle in his triceps tear in one arm.  
  
Logan hung there, facing forward with his arms contorted behind him.   
His face was a kabuki mask of pain that only dissipated slightly when he  
noticed the room below.   
  
The Ouroboros he and Juniper had discovered hidden within the  
chicken scratch hieroglyphics on the floor glowed in the galloping  
darkness. With the giant gears spinning, the great snake seemed massive  
and alive. As the space buckled and twisted, the beast seemed to be  
constricting. Its coiled, phosphorescent outline tightened around the  
shattered remains of the dark tower.   
  
His eyes narrowed in incomprehension. The whole space below  
seemed to wobble and shimmer like a salt flat viewed from a distance at  
high noon. Worse, the warped air was expanding, climbing higher and  
higher, surrounding and distorting everything it came into contact with.   
Logan did not know what this meant, but his overriding instinct was to  
escape.  
  
Wolverine looked briefly around, gauging the soundness of the  
scaffold, then decided to risk it. He released his grip on the safety of the  
platform with one hand, spinning around with his other hand as the only  
lifeline. Wheeling quickly, he came around the corner to face forward  
and gripped the other side, dangling from the edge. His nose brushed the  
point of the corner, and Logan grinned. Close.  
  
Grape vining his legs around the corner's support pole, he tugged on it  
with one hand to test its viability. It seemed solid, so he grabbed on and  
began to pull himself upwards, hand over hand. For once, the training he  
put himself through in the Danger Room seemed worthwhile. With his  
platform broken, it was a good twelve feet up to the next level, and his  
arm hurt badly enough that the going was slow.  
  
Risking a look over his shoulder, Logan saw that the muddled  
distortion grew closer, and that the glowing design on the floor was  
brighter, undulating with a disconcerting inner life. He pulled fast,  
climbing as quickly as he dared.  
  
He had nearly arrived at the next level when the scaffold tumbled to  
the side. Logan squinted against the pain in his arm. He reached up to try  
and grab a hold of the platform when he saw the bolt holding the support  
beam he was climbing. It wobbled in its bent mounting, nearly free of its  
mooring.  
  
"Cripes," he said. With all his strength he pushed himself upwards but  
it was too late. The pole detached from the platform and fell forward in a  
wide arc. The scaffolding above collapsed downward with a bang, and  
that was all that saved Logan from plunging into the abyss.  
  
The strut held its lower clamp and slammed to a stop pointing out  
ninety degrees from the badly twisted scaffold. The jolt at the bottom of  
the plunge ripped Logan's legs from the pole and he hung from it with one  
hand. He breathed for a moment, pushing the pain from his mind. Then  
he reached forward to climb back to the structure hand-over-hand, but the  
stress was too much for his bad arm.  
  
He kicked his legs up to try and loop them over the pole, but the  
movement jolted his lifeline. There was a terrible shrieking sound, the  
support bent even further. Painfully, he used his bad arm as a guide and  
began to pull himself forward on the pole. He slid with agonizing  
slowness, the broken scaffold a beacon of hope. It had folded on itself so  
badly that it was almost more stable than it would have been left to its  
own devices. If he could get on top, Logan might still be able to get out of  
the Library in one piece.  
  
The distortion below moved closer, and Logan had to pull up his feet  
to keep away from it. He didn't know if the wavering air would harm  
him, and he had no intention of finding out. With a clang, the pole  
dropped again, and Wolverine nearly lost his grip. The beam swayed  
slightly, only held in place now by the weight of the collapsed structure.   
Logan was close, though. He reached forward, straining with all he had.   
  
His fingertips brushed the edge of the scaffold, and a smile spread  
across his dust-chapped lips. Then the steel and wood of the great house  
of cards seemed to move away from him, flying quickly upwards toward  
the pale moon above. It took Wolverine a moment to realize the support  
pole was sliding free from the structure.   
  
Logan held onto the long steel beam even as he tumbled into the  
wavering light and darkness below, the ancient hall collapsing around  
him.  
  
***  
  
The human mind is capable of billions of simultaneous actions. This  
is the reason that scientists of the time had such immeasurable difficulty  
in coming up with a useful model for artificial intelligence. Consider the  
average walk down a city street: not only does one take steps, one feels the  
ground, smells the air. A person defines each sensation within their own  
frame of reference, deciphers an infinite number of visual cues and sounds  
and scents and pulls meaning from them. They apply to each and every  
sensation and action a whole body of life experience, defining and relating  
and immediately transferring to memory.  
  
Consider the mind of a telepath. The totality of their experience runs  
even deeper, a whole body of sensory experience open to them that is  
unavailable to the average person on the street. Not only do they sort out  
their own experience, but on some unconscious level, they do the same for  
every soul they come into contact with as they receive the psychic  
information every individual sloughs off. Those who are successful at  
sorting out this information lead full lives. Those who cannot often find  
themselves living voicelessly in institutions or seeking escape through  
drugs or worse. Jean Grey was as successful as a telepath might be  
expected to be. She had a full grasp on controlling her sensitivities and  
had a keen and intelligent mind capable of handling all of the reams of  
information she encountered on a daily basis.   
  
What was it about the time when she entered the Westchester  
Consolidated High School cafeteria that caused her to remember it not as  
a whole, but as a series of disconnected sights and sounds and smells and  
tastes? Why are the memories a scrapbook of experiences wholly  
unrelated to anything before or after?  
  
She walked into the room. She moved more than a ton of wet and  
broken refuse to do so. Jean Grey strode in with something like anger  
playing on her beautiful features, ready and willing to protect her  
distraught companions. She expected an enemy, and was prepared for  
battle. When she looked around, though, the world seemed to break apart.   
It became a mosaic, a perversion of reality. She heard her pulse in her  
ears, felt her heart beating in her chest. Jean tasted adrenaline and bile  
and fear, though she was not sure if they were her own or vestigial  
sensations from her teammates. She parted her lips to speak, but no words  
escaped. The scene played before her like some theatrical tableau isolated  
from the world beyond the stage.  
  
Scott standing in his black uniform, his teeth glittering.  
  
"Stop it!" Kitty screamed. She had become a woman at some point  
when Jean wasn't watching. "Stop it!" Her hands were on her face, as  
though she were trying to hold her head on.  
  
There were tears streaming down Rogue's face as she stood with Betsy  
in her arms.   
  
THWAK! The sound was wetter now. THWAK! THWAK!  
  
The broken thing on the floor. It quivered.  
  
Scott was wearing his black uniform.  
  
"Stop it!" Kitty shouted again. There was a white line on the ring  
finger of her right hand. She must have been wearing a ring for a long  
time to get that.  
  
Blood on the linoleum floor. So much blood.  
  
Steam rising from the lunch counter. The food was still warm. Jean  
wasn't hungry.  
  
Psylocke's beautiful hair was singed and streaked with the white dust  
that clouded the air.  
  
The thing on the floor, twisted and soaked. THWAK! It was struck  
again from above.  
  
The tiles on the floor had small gaps between them. There must have  
been a subtle slant to the room because the blood flowed from the pool in  
a spider web of cracks. Jean worried that the janitors might have a hard  
time cleaning it up if it dried.  
  
Tears flowed down Rogue's face, cutting through the patina of  
powdery soot covering her.  
  
Scott's *black* uniform.   
  
"Stop it!"  
  
THWAK! The baseball bat was *black*. It rose from the (body) thing  
on the floor slowly. A thin stream dripped from it.  
  
Rogue's gloved hand stroked Betsy's neck protectively. She wasn't  
conscious that she was doing it, or that it did help in comforting the  
injured woman.  
  
"Stop it, Scott!"  
  
Scott's uniform was wet and black. It was supposed to be blue.  
  
The janitor's would have a tough road to hoe. That was for sure.  
  
The bat came down again. It poked the (little boy) thing on the floor,  
rolling it lifelessly. The (child) thing lolled bonelessly.  
  
A rumble came from across the school. The police coming in.  
  
Scott looked up at the sound. He looked at his wife. There was a drop  
of blood on his chin, but it wouldn't fall.  
  
"Alright," he said. "Rogue, you've got Psylocke."  
  
He poked at the dead child lying at his feet one last time, then tossed  
the bat. It clattered away, a hollow wooden sound trailing in its wake.  
  
Kitty stood with her head in her hands. Her lips trembled. She looked  
from the body to Cyclops. Scott. Jean's husband and back.  
  
"Kitty, you're with me. Phoenix?"  
  
His uniform was black as midnight, glittering wetly. Husband. Leader.   
Friend.   
  
"Phoenix, I want you to deal with the police. Make sure they don't  
notice us, understand?"  
  
Lover. Beloved. Soul mate.  
  
"Understand?"  
  
"I understand, Cyclops," she heard herself say. She did as she was  
told. They all did, moving like stunted ghosts out of the room.  
  
"Alright, X-Men. By the numbers," he said, stepping over the dead  
child and walking toward the door. "It's time to move on."  
  
  
  
To Be Continued . . .  
  
  
Next: Four initiations, three warnings, two connections and one last  
chance.  
  
X-Men: Half Lit World  
  
Chapter IV: Hypatia's Mimic  



End file.
